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THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 


THE 

PATIENT  OBSERVER 

AND   HIS   FRIENDS 


By 

SIMEON   STRUNSKY 

: 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1911 


Copyright,  1910,  by  THK  EVENING  POST  COMPANY 
Copyright,  1910,  by  P.  F.  COLLIER  &  SON 
Copyright,  1910,  by  HAKPKB  &  BBOTHERS 
Copyright,' ,1910,  by  THE  ATLANTIC  MONTHLY  Co. 
Copyright,  1911,  Dy  DODD,  kEAD  AND  COMPANY 


To 

M.  G.  S. 


983974 


CONTENTS 

I  COWARDS     ....     Page     1 

II  THE  CHURCH  UNIVERSAL  .        .  10 

III  THE  DOCTORS     ....  19 

IV  INTERROGATION           ...  29 

V  THE  MIND  TRIUMPHANT  .        .  37 

VI  ON  CALLING  WHITE  BLACK       .  45 

VII  THE  SOLID  FLESH      ...  57 

VIII  SOME   NEWSPAPER   TRAITS        .  67 

IX  A  FLEDGLING      ....  80 

X  THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR — I  92 

XI  THE  EVERLASTING  FEMININE   .  100 

XII  THE  FANTASTIC  TOE  .      .         .  Ill 

XIII  ON  LIVING  IN  BROOKLYN  .         .119 

XIV  PALLADINO  OUTDONE          .        .130 
XV  THE  CADENCE   OF   THE  CROWD  138 

XVI  WHAT  WE  FORGET   ...  147 

XVII  THE  CHILDREN  THAT  LEAD  Us  159 

XVIII  THE  MARTIANS  ....  179 
vii 


Vlll 


CONTENTS 


XIX   THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR 

—II 189 

XX      WHEN  A  FRIEND  MARRIES    .  198 

XXI      THE  PERFECT  UNION  OF  THE 

ARTS            ....  209 

XXII      AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN      .  216 

XXIII      BEHIND  THE  TIMES        .         .  227 

XXIV      PUBLIC    LIARS        ,         .         .  238 

XXV      THE    COMPLETE    COLLECTOR 

—III 249 

XXVI      THE    COMMUTER    ...  257 

XXVII      HEADLINES      ....  270 

XXVIII      USAGE 278 

XXIX      60   H.P 285 

XXX      THE   SAMPLE  LIFE        .         .  296 

XXXI      THE    COMPLETE    COLLECTOR 

—IV            ....  313 

XXXII      CHOPIN'S  SUCCESSORS    .        .  320 

XXXIII      THE      IRREPRESSIBLE      CON 
FLICT           ....  327 

XXXIV      THE  GERMS  OF  CULTURE  336 


NOTE 

OF  the  papers  that  go  to  make  up  the  present 
volume,  the  greater  number  were  published  as 
a  series  in  the  columns  of  the  New  York  Even 
ing  Post  for  1910,  under  the  general  title  of 
The  Patient  Observer.  For  the  eminently  lauda 
ble  purpose  of  making  a  fairly  thick  book,  the 
Patient  Observer's  frequently  recurrent  "  I," 
"  me,"  and  "  mine  "  have  now  been  supplemented 
with  the  experiences  and  reflections  of  his 
friends  Harrington,  Cooper,  and  Harding  as 
recorded  on  other  occasions  in  the  New  York 
Evening  Post,  as  well  as  in  the  Atlantic 
Monthly,  the  Bookman,  Collier's,  and  Harper's 
Weekly. 


I 

COWARDS 

IT  was  Harrington  who  brought,  . 
topic  that  men  take  up  in  their  most  cheerful 
moments.  I  mean,  of  course,  the  subject  of 
death.  Harrington  quoted  a  great  scientist  as 
saying  that  death  is  the  one  great  fear  that, 
consciously  or  not,  always  hovers  over  us.  But 
the  five  men  who  were  at  table  with  Harrington 
that  night  immediately  and  sharply  disagreed 
with  him. 

Harding  was  the  first  to  protest.  He  said 
the  belief  that  all  men  are  afraid  of  death  is 
just  as  false  as  the  belief  that  all  women  are 
afraid  of  mice.  It  is  not  the  big  facts  that 
humanity  is  afraid  of,  but  the  little  things. 
For  himself,  he  could  honestly  say  that  he  was 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

not  afraid  of  death.  He  defied  it  every  morn 
ing  when  he  ran  for  his  train,  although  he 
knew  that  he  thereby  weakened  his  heart.  He 
defied  it  when  he  smoked  too  much  and  read  too 
late  at  night,  and  refused  to  take  exercise  or 
/'.  ;  :/',  \''<  [ity  wear;  rufrbiers  when  it  rained.  All  men,  he 
repeated,  are  afraid  of  little  things.  Person 
ally,  what  he  was  most  intensely  and  most  en- 
duringly  afraid  of  was  a  revolving  storm-door. 
Harding  confessed  that  he  approaches  a  re 
volving  door  in  a  state  of  absolute  terror.  To 
see  him  falter  before  the  rotating  wings,  rush 
forward,  halt,  and  retreat  with  knees  trembling, 
is  to  witness  a  shattering  spectacle  of  com 
plete  physical  disorganisation.  Harding  said 
that  he  enters  a  revolving  door  with  no  serious 
hope  of  coming  out  alive.  By  anticipation  he 
feels,  his  face  driven  through  the  glass  parti 
tion  in  front  of  him,  and  the  crash  of  the  panel 
behind  him  upon  his  skull.  Some  day,  Hard- 


COWARDS 

ing  believed,  he  would  be  caught  fast  in  one 
of  those  compartments  and  stick.  Axes  and 
crowbars  would  be  requisitioned  to  retrieve  his 
lifeless  form. 

Bowman  agreed  with  Harding.  His  own 
life,  Bowman  was  inclined  to  believe,  is  typical 
of  most  civilised  men,  in  that  it  is  passed  in 
constant  terror  of  his  inferiors.  The  people 
whom  he  hires  to  serve  him  strike  fear  into 
Bowman's  soul.  He  is  habitually  afraid  of 
janitors,  train-guards,  elevator-boys,  barbers, 
bootblacks,  telephone-girls,  and  saleswomen. 
But  his  particular  dread  is  of  waiters.  There 
have  been  times  when  Bowman  thought  that  to 
punish  poor  service  and  set  an  example  to  oth 
ers,  he  would  omit  the  customary  tip.  But 
such  a  resolution,  embraced  with  the  soup,  has 
never  lasted  beyond  the  entree.  And,  as  a  mat 
ter  of  fact,  Bowman  said,  such  a  resolution  al 
ways  spoils  his  dinner.  As  long  as  he  enter- 
3 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

tains  it,  he  dares  not  look  his  man  in  the  eye. 
He  stirs  his  coffee  with  shaking  fingers.  He  is 
cravenly,  horribly  afraid. 

Bowman  is  afraid  even  of  new  waiters  and 
of  waiters  he  never  expects  to  see  again. 
Surely,  it  must  be  safe  not  to  tip  a  waiter  one 
never  expected  to  see  again.  "  But  no,"  said 
Bowman,  "  I  should  feel  his  contemptuous  gaze 
in  the  marrow  of  my  backbone  as  I  walked  out. 
I  could  not  keep  from  shaking,  and  I  should 
rush  from  that  place  in  agony,  with  the  man's 
derisive  laughter  ringing  in  my  ears." 

The  only  one  of  the  company  who  was  not 
afraid  of  something  concrete,  something  tangi 
ble,  was  Williams.  Now  Williams  is  notori 
ously,  hopelessly  shy;  and  when  he  took  up  the 
subject  where  Bowman  had  left  it,  he  poured 
out  his  soul  with  all  the  fervour  and  abandon 
of  which  only  the  shy  are  capable.  Williams 
was  afraid  of  his  own  past.  It  was  not  a  hide- 
4 


COWARDS 

ously  criminal  one,  for  his  life  had  been  that  of 
a  bookworm  and  recluse.  But  out  of  that  past 
Williams  would  conjure  up  the  slightest  inci 
dent — a  trifling  breach  of  manners,  a  mere  word 
out  of  place,  a  moment  in  which  he  had  lost  con 
trol  of  his  emotions,  and  the  memory  of  it 
would  put  him  into  a  cold  sweat  of  horror  and 
shame. 

Years  ago,  at  a  small  dinner  party,  Williams 
had  overturned  a  glass  of  water  on  the  table 
cloth;  and  whenever  he  thinks  of  that  glass  of 
water,  his  heart  beats  furiously,  his  palate  goes 
dry,  and  there  is  a  horribly  empty  feeling  in  his 
stomach.  Once,  on  some  similar  occasion,  Wil 
liams  fell  into  animated  talk  with  a  beautiful 
young  woman.  He  spoke  so  rapidly  and  so 
well  that  the  rest  of  the  company  dropped  their 
chat  and  gathered  about  him.  It  was  five  min 
utes,  perhaps,  before  he  was  aware  of  what 
was  going  on.  That  night  Williams  walked 
5 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  streets  in  an  agony  of  remorse.  The  recol 
lection  of  the  incident  comes  back  to  him  every 
now  and  then,  and,  whether  he  is  alone  at  his 
desk,  or  in  the  theatre,  or  in  a  Broadway 
crowd,  he  groans  with  pain.  Take  away  such 
memories  of  the  past,  Williams  told  us,  and  he 
knew  of  nothing  in  life  that  he  is  afraid  of. 

Gordon's  was  quite  a  different  case.  The 
group  about  the  table  burst  out  laughing  when 
Gordon  assured  us  that  above  all  things  else  in 
this  world  he  is  afraid  of  elephants.  He  agreed 
with  Bowman  that  in  the  latitude  of  New  York 
City  and  under  the  zoologic  conditions  prevail 
ing  here,  it  was  a  preposterous  fear  to  enter 
tain.  Gordon  lives  in  Harlem,  and  he 
recognises  clearly  enough  that  the  only  ele 
phant-bearing  jungle  in  the  neighbourhood  is 
Central  Park,  whence  an  animal  would  be  com 
pelled  to  take  a  Subway  train  to  One  Hundred 
and  Twenty-fifth  Street,  and  lie  in  wait  for 
6 


COWARDS 

him  as  he  came  home  in  the  twilight.  But  ir 
rational  or  no,  there  was  the  fact.  To  be 
quashed  into  pulp  under  one  of  those  girder- 
like  front  legs,  Gordon  felt  must  be  abomi 
nable.  To  make  matters  worse,  Gordon  has  a 
young  son  who  insists  on  being  taken  every 
Sunday  morning  to  see  the  animals;  and  of  all 
attractions  in  the  menagerie,  the  child  prefers 
the  elephant  house.  He  loves  to  feed  the  big 
gest  of  the  elephants,  and  to  watch  him  place 
pennies  in  a  little  wooden  box  and  register 
the  deposits  on  a  bell.  What  Gordon  suffers 
at  such  times,  he  told  us,  can  be  neither  imag 
ined  nor  described. 

My  own  story  was  received  with  sympathetic 
attention.  I  told  them  that  the  one  great 
terror  of  my  life  is  a  certain  man  who  owes 
me  a  fairly  large  sum  of  money,  borrowed  some 
years  ago.  Whenever  we  meet  he  insists  on 
recalling  the  debt  and  reminding  me  of  how 
7 


THE   PATIENT    OBSERVER 

much  the  favour  meant  to  him  at  the  time,  and 
how  he  never  ceases  to  think  of  it.  Meeting 
him  has  become  a  torture.  I  do  my  best  to 
avoid  him,  and  frequently  succeed.  But  often 
he  will  catch  sight  of  me  across  the  street  and 
run  over  and  grasp  me  by  the  hand  and  in 
quire  after  my  health  in  so  hearty,  so  honest  a 
fashion  that  I  cannot  bear  to  look  him  in  the 
face.  And  as  he  beams  on  me  and  throws  his 
arm  over  my  shoulder,  I  can  only  blush  and 
shift  from  one  foot  to  the  other  and  stammer 
out  some  excuse  for  hurrying  away.  Passers-by 
stop  and  admire  the  man's  affection  and  con 
cern  for  one  who  is  evidently  some  poor  devil 
of  a  relation  from  the  country.  One  Sunday 
he  waylaid  me  on  Riverside  Drive  and  intro 
duced  me  to  his  wife  as  one  of  his  dearest 
friends.  I  mumbled  something  about  its  not 
having  rained  the  entire  week,  and  his  wife, 
who  was  a  stately  person  in  silks,  looked  at  me 
8 


COWARDS 

out  of  a  cold  eye.  Then  and  there  I  knew  she 
decided  that  I  was  a  person  who  had  something 
to  conceal  and  probably  took  advantage  of  her 
husband. 

No;  the  more  I  think  of  it,  the  more  con 
vinced  am  I  that  very  few  men  pass  their  time 
in  contemplating  death,  which  is  the  end  of  all 
things.  Only  those  people  do  it  who  have  noth 
ing  else  to  be  afraid  of,  or  who,  like  under 
takers  and  bacteriologists,  make  a  living  out 
of  it. 


II 

THE  CHURCH  UNIVERSAL 

HARDING  declares  that  a  solid  thought  before 
going  to  bed  sets  him  dreaming  just  like  a  bit 
of  solid  food.  One  night,  Harding  and  I  dis 
cussed  modern  tendencies  in  the  Church.  As 
a  result  Harding  dreamt  that  night  that  he  was 
reading  a  review  in  the  Theological  Weekly  of 
November  12,  2009. 

"  Seldom,"  wrote  the  reviewer,  "  has  it  been 
our  good  fortune  to  meet  with  as  perfect  a 
piece  of  work  as  James  Brown  Ducey's  '  The 
American  Clergyman  in  the  Early  Twentieth 
Century.'  The  book  consists  of  exactly  half  a 
hundred  biographies  of  eminent  churchmen;  in 
these  fifty  brief  sketches  is  mirrored  faithfully 
the  entire  religious  life,  external  and  internal, 
10 


THE    CHURCH   UNIVERSAL 

of  the  American  people  eighty  or  ninety  years 
ago.  We  can  do  our  readers  no  better  service 
than  to  reproduce  from  Mr.  Ducey's  pages,  in 
condensed  form,  the  lives  of  half  a  dozen  typical 
clergymen,  leaving  the  reader  to  frame  his  own 
conception  of  the  magnificent  activity  which 
the  Church  of  that  early  day  brought  to  the 
service  of  religion. 

"  The  Rev.  Pelatiah  W.  Jenks,  who  was  called 
to  the  richest  pulpit  in  New  York  in  1912,  suc 
ceeded  within  less  than  three  years  in  building 
up  an  unrivalled  system  of  dancing  academies 
and  roller-skating  rinks  for  young  people.  Un 
der  him  the  attendance  at  the  Sunday  afternoon 
sparring  exhibitions  in  the  vestry  rooms  of  the 
church  increased  from  an  average  of  54  to  an 
average  of  650.  In  spite  of  the  nominal  fee 
charged  for  the  use  of  the  congregation's  bowl 
ing  alleys,  the  income  from  that  source  alone 
was  sufficient  to  defray  the  cost  of  missionary 
11 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

work  in  all  Africa,  south  of  the  Zambesi  River. 
Dr.  Jenks's  highest  ambition  was  attained  in 
1923  when  the  Onyx  Church's  football  team 
won  the  championship  of  the  Ecclesiastical 
League  of  Greater  New  York.  It  was  in  the 
same  year  that  Dr.  Jenks  took  the  novel  step 
of  abandoning  services  in  St.  Basil's  Chapel, 
now  situated  in  a  slum  district,  and  substitut 
ing  a  moving-picture  show  with  vaudeville  fea 
tures.  Thereafter  the  empty  chapel  was  filled 
to  overcrowding  on  Sundays.  To  encourage 
church  attendance  at  Sunday  morning  services, 
Dr.  Jenks  established  a  tipless  barber  shop. 
Two  years  later,  in  spite  of  the  murmured  pro 
tests  of  the  conservative  element  in  his  congre 
gation,  he  erected  one  of  the  finest  Turkish 
baths  in  New  York  City. 

"  The  Rev.  Coningsby  Botts,  Ph.D.,  LL.D., 
D.D.,  was  regarded  as  the  greatest  pulpit  orator 
of  his  day.     His  Sunday  evening  sermons  drew 
12 


THE    CHURCH   UNIVERSAL 

thousands  of  auditors.  Of  Dr.  Botts's  pol 
ished  sermons,  our  author  gives  a  complete  list, 
together  with  short  extracts.  We  should  have 
to  go  far  to  discover  a  specimen  of  richer  elo 
quence  than  the  sermon  delivered  on  the  after 
noon  of  the  third  Sunday  after  Epiphany,  in 
the  year  1911,  on  '  Dr.  Cook  and  the  Discovery 
of  the  North  Pole.'  On  the  second  Sunday  in 
Lent,  Dr.  Botts  moved  an  immense  congrega 
tion  to  tears  with  his  sermon,  '  Does  Radium 
Cure  Cancer  ?  '  Trinity  Sunday  he  spoke  on 
6  Zola,  and  His  Place  in  Literature.'  The  sec 
ond  Sunday  in  Advent  he  discussed  *  The  Posi 
tion  of  Woman  in  the  Fiji  Islands.'  We  can 
only  pick  a  subject  here  and  there  out  of  his 
other  numerous  pastoral  speeches :  '  Is  Aviation 
an  Established  Fact?  '  '  The  Influence  of  Blake 
Upon  Dante  Gabriel  Rossetti,'  '  Dalmatia  as  a 
Health  Resort,'  and  'Amatory  Poetry  Among 
the  Primitive  Races.' 

IS 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  The  Rev.  Cadwallader  Abiel  Jones  has 
earned  a  pre-eminent  place  in  Church  history 
as  the  man  who  did  most  to  endow  Pittsburg 
with  a  permanent  Opera  House.  Our  author 
relates  how  in  the  winter  of  1916,  when  the 
noted  impresario  Silverman  threatened  to  sell 
his  Opera  House  for  a  horse  exchange  unless 
100  Pittsburg  citizens  would  guarantee  $5,000 
each  for  a  season  of  twenty  weeks,  Dr.  Jones 
made  a  house-to-house  canvass  in  his  automo 
bile  and  went  without  sleep  till  the  half-million 
dollars  was  pledged.  He  fell  seriously  ill  of 
pneumonia,  but  recovered  in  time  to  be  present 
at  the  signing  of  the  contract.  Dr.  Jones  used 
to  assert  that  there  was  more  moral  uplift  in 
a  single  performance  of  the  '  Mikado  '  than  in 
the  entire  book  of  Psalms.  One  of  his  notable 
achievements  was  a  Christmas  Eve  service  con 
sisting  of  some  magnificent  kinetoscope  pictures 
of  the  Day  of  Judgment  with  music  by  Richard 


THE    CHURCH   UNIVERSAL 

Strauss.  Tradition  also  ascribes  to  Dr.  Jones 
a  saying  that  the  two  most  powerful  influences 
for  good  in  New  York  City  were  Miss  Mary 
Garden  and  the  Eden  Musee.  But  our  author 
thinks  the  story  is  apocryphal.  He  is  rather 
inclined  to  believe,  from  the  collocation  of  the 
two  names,  that  we  have  here  a  distorted  ver 
sion  of  the  Biblical  creation  myth. 

"  The  Fourteenth  Avenue  Church  of  Cleve 
land,  Ohio,  under  its  famous  pastor,  the  Rev. 
Henry  Marcellus  Stokes,  exercised  a  prepon 
derant  influence  in  city  politics  from  1917  to 
1925.  Dr.  Stokes  was  remorseless  in  flaying 
the  bosses  and  their  henchmen.  At  least  a  dozen 
candidates  for  Congress  could  trace  their  de 
feat  directly  to  the  efforts  of  the  Fourteenth 
Avenue  Church.  The  successful  candidates 
profited  by  the  lesson,  and,  during  the  three 
years'  fight  over  tariff  revision,  from  1919  to 
,  they  voted  strictly  in  accordance  with 
15 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

telegraphic  instructions  from  Dr.  Stokes.  In 
the  fall  of  1921  Dr.  Stokes's  congregation 
voted  almost  unanimously  to  devote  the  funds 
hitherto  used  for  home  mission  work  to  the 
maintenance  of  a  legislative  bureau  at  the  State 
capital.  The  influence  of  the  bureau  was 
plainly  perceptible  in  the  Legislature's  fa 
vourable  action  on  such  measures  as  the  Cleve 
land  Two-Cent  Fare  bill  and  the  bill  abolishing 
the  bicycle  and  traffic  squads  in  all  cities  with 
a  population  of  more  than  50,000. 

"  Our  author  lays  particular  stress  on  the 
career  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Brooks  Powderly  of  New 
York,  who,  at  the  age  of  thirty-five,  was  rec 
ognized  as  America's  leading  authority  on  slum 
life.  Dr.  Powderly's  numerous  books  and 
magazine  articles  on  the  subject  speak  for  them 
selves.  Our  author  mentions  among  others, 
'  The  Bowery  From  the  Inside,'  *  At  What  Age 
Do  Stevedores  Marry?'  'The  Relative  Con- 
16 


THE    CHURCH   UNIVERSAL 

sumption  of  Meat,  Pastry,  and  Vegetables 
Among  Our  Foreign  Population,'  '  How  Soon 
Does  the  Average  Immigrant  Cast  His  First 
Vote?'  'The  Proper  Lighting  for  Recreation 
Piers,'  and,  what  was  perhaps  his  most  popular 
book,  '  Burglar's  Tools  and  How  to  Use  Them.' 
"  In  running  through  the  appendix  to  Mr. 
Ducey's  volume,"  concludes  the  reviewer,  "  we 
come  across  an  interesting  paragraph  headed, 
*A  Curious  Survival.'  It  is  a  reprint  of  an 
obituary  from  the  New  York  Evening  Post  of 
August,  1911,  dealing  with  the  minister  of  a 
small  church  far  up  in  the  Bronx,  who  died  at 
the  age  of  eighty-one,  after  serving  in  the  same 
pulpit  for  fifty-three  years.  The  Evening 
Post  notice  states  that  while  the  Rev.  Mr.  Smith 
was  quite  unknown  below  the  Harlem,  he  had 
won  a  certain  prestige  in  his  own  neighbour 
hood  through  his  old-fashioned  homilies,  de 
livered  twice  every  Sunday  in  the  year,  on  love, 
17 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

charity,  pure  living,  clean  thinking,  early  mar 
riage,  and  the  mutual  duties  of  parents  towards 
their  children  and  of  children  towards  their  par 
ents.  '  In  the  Rev.  Mr.  Smith,'  remarks  our 
author,  '  we  have  a  striking  vestigial  specimen 
of  an  almost  extinct  type.'  " 


18 


Ill 

THE  DOCTORS 

THE  quarrels  of  the  doctors  do  not  concern 
me.  I  have  worked  out  a  classification  of  my 
own  which  holds  good  for  the  entire  profession. 
All  doctors,  I  believe,  may  be  divided  into  those 
who  go  clean-shaven  and  those  who  wear  beards. 
The  difference  is  more  than  one  of  appearance. 
It  is  a  difference  of  temperament  and  conduct. 
The  smooth-faced  physician  represents  the 
buoyant,  the  romantic,  what  one  might  almost 
call  the  impressionistic  strain  in  the  medical 
profession.  The  other  is  the  conservative,  the 
classicist.  My  personal  likings  are  all  for  the 
newer  type,  but  I  do  not  mind  admitting  that 
if  I  were  very  ill  indeed,  I  should  be  tempted 
to  send  for  the  physician  who  wears  a  Vandyke 
and  smiles  only  at  long  intervals. 
19 


THE    PATIENT    OBSERVER 

The  reason  is  that  when  I  am  really  ill  I 
want  some  one  who  believes  me.  That  is  some 
thing  which  the  clean-shaven  doctor  seldom 
does.  He  is  of  the  breezy,  modern  school  which 
maintains  that  nine  patients  out  of  ten  are  only 
the  victims  of  their  own  imagination.  He 
greets  you  in  a  jolly,  brotherly  fashion,  takes 
your  pulse,  and  says :  "  Oh,  well,  I  guess  you're 
not  going  to  die  this  trip,"  and  he  roars,  as  if 
it  were  the  greatest  joke  in  the  world  to  call  up 
the  picture  of  such  dreadful  possibilities. 
When  he  prescribes,  it  is  in  a  half-apologetic, 
half-quizzical  manner,  and  almost  with  a  wink, 
as  if  he  were  to  say,  "  This  is  a  game,  old  man, 
but  I  suppose  it's  as  honest  a  way  of  earning 
one's  living  as  most  ways."  While  he  writes 
out  his  directions,  he  comments :  "  There  is 
nothing  the  matter  with  you,  and  you  will  take 
this  powder  three  times  a  day  with  your  meals. 
It  is  just  a  case  of  too  much  tobacco  supple- 
20 


THE    DOCTORS 

mented  by  a  fertile  fancy.  Rub  your  chest  with 
this  before  you  go  to  bed  and  avoid  draughts. 
And  what  you  need  is  not  medicine  but  the  ac 
tive  agitation  for  two  hours  every  day  of  the 
two  legs  which  the  Lord  gave  you,  and  which 
you  now  employ  exclusively  for  making  your 
way  to  and  from  the  railway  station.  This  is 
for  your  digestion,  and  you  can  have  it  put  up 
in  pills  or  in  liquid  form,  according  to  taste. 
And  the  next  time  you  feel  inclined  to  call  me 
in,  think  it  over  in  the  course  of  a  ten-mile 
walk." 

Now  this  may  be  cheering  if  somewhat  mixed 
treatment,  but  it  has  nothing  of  that  sympathy 
which  the  ailing  body  craves.  The  case  is  much 
worse  if  your  smooth-faced  physician  happens 
to  be  a  personal  friend.  The  indifference  with 
which  such  a  man  will  listen  to  the  most  pitiful 
recital  of  physical  suffering  is  extraordinary. 
You  may  be  out  on  the  golf  links  together,  and 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

he  has  just  made  an  exceptionally  fine  iron  shot 
from  a  bad  lie  and  in  the  face  of  a  lively  breeze. 
He  is  naturally  pleased,  and  you  take  courage 
from  the  situation.  "  By  the  way,  Smith,"  you 
say,  "  I  have  been  feeling  rather  queer  for  a 
day  or  two.  There  is  a  gnawing  sensation  right 

here,  and  when  I  stoop "    "  That  must  have 

been  180  yards,"  he  says,  "  but  not  quite  on  the 
green.  You  don't  chew  your  food  enough. 
Take  a  glass  of  hot  water  before  your  break 
fast — and  you  had  better  try  your  mashie ! " 
Of  course,  no  one  likes  to  talk  shop,  especially 
on  the  golf  links.  Still  you  think,  if  you  were 
a  physician  and  you  had  a  friend  who  had  a 
gnawing  sensation,  you  would  be  more  consid 
erate.  After  the  game  he  lights  his  cigar  and 
orders  you  not  to  smoke  if  the  pain  in  your 
chest  is  really  what  you  have  described  it.  "  In 
me,"  he  says,  cheerfully,  "  you  get  a  physician 
and  a  horrible  example  for  one  price." 


THE   DOCTORS 

But  there  is  one  thing  that  this  impression 
istic  school  of  medicine  has  in  common  with 
the  other  kind.  Both  types  are  faithful  to  the 
funereal  type  of  waiting-room  which  is  one  of 
the  signs  of  the  trade.  It  is  a  room  in  which 
all  the  arts  of  the  undertaker  have  seemingly 
been  called  upon  to  bring  out  the  full  possibili 
ties  of  the  average  New  York  brownstone 
"  front-parlour."  I  have  often  tried  to  decide 
whether,  in  a  doctor's  waiting-room,  night  or 
day  was  more  conducive  to  thoughts  of  the 
grave.  At  night  a  lamp  flickers  dimly  in  one 
corner  of  the  long  room,  and  the  shadows  only 
deepen  those  other  shadows  which  lie  on  the  ail 
ing  spirit.  But  this  same  darkness  mercifully 
conceals  the  long  line  of  ash-coloured  family 
portraits  in  gold  frames,  the  ash-coloured  car 
pet  and  chandelier,  and  the  hideous  aggregation 
of  ash-coloured  couches  and  chairs  which  make 
up  the  daylight  picture.  Why  doctors'  recep- 
23 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

tion  rooms  should  always  so  strongly  combine 
the  attractiveness  of  a  popular  lunch-room  on 
a  rainy  day  with  the  quiet  domestic  atmosphere 
of  a  county  jail,  I  have  never  been  able  to  find 
out,  unless  the  object  is  to  reduce  the  patient 
to  such  a  horrible  state  of  depression  that  the 
mere  summons  to  enter  the  doctor's  presence 
makes  one  feel  very  much  better  already.  There 
are  times  when  to  be  told  that  one  has  pneu 
monia  or  an  incipient  case  of  tuberculosis  must 
be  a  relief  after  an  hour  spent  in  one  of  those 
dreadful  ante-chambers. 

The  literature  in  a  physician's  waiting-room 
is  not  exhilarating.  Usually,  there  is  an  ex 
tensive  collection  of  periodicals  four  months  old 
and  over.  From  this  I  gather  that  physicians' 
wives  and  daughters  are  persistent  but  some 
what  deliberate  readers  of  current  literature. 
The  sense  of  age  about  the  magazines  on  a  doc 
tor's  table  is  heightened  by  the  absence  of  the 


THE   DOCTORS 

front  and  back  covers.  The  only  way  of  as 
certaining  the  date  of  publication  is  to  hunt 
for  the  table  of  contents.  That,  however,  is  a 
task  which  few  able-bodied  men  in  the  prime 
of  life  are  equal  to,  not  to  say  a  roomful  of 
sick  people,  nervous  with  anticipation.  Most 
patients  under  such  circumstances  set  out  cour 
ageously,  but  only  to  lose  themselves  in  the  first 
half-dozen  pages  of  the  advertising  section. 
Yet  the  result  is  by  no  means  harmful.  There 
is  something  about  the  advertising  agent's  buoy 
ant,  insinuating,  sympathetic  tone  that  is  very 
restful  to  the  invalid  nerves.  Harrington  tells 
me  that  the  small  suburban  house  in  which  he 
lives,  the  paint  and  roofing  with  which  he  pro 
tects  it  against  the  weather,  the  lawn-mower 
which  he  has  secured  in  anticipation  of  a  good 
crop  of  grass,  and  the  small  stock  of  poultry 
he  experiments  with,  were  all  acquired  through 
advertisements  read  in  doctors'  waiting-rooms. 
25 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Some  physicians  take  in  the  illustrated  weeklies 
as  well  as  the  monthly  magazines.  In  one  of 
the  former  I  found  the  other  day  an  excellent 
panoramic  view  of  the  second  inauguration  of 
President  McKinley. 

But  I  am  afraid  I  have  wandered  somewhat 
from  what  I  set  out  to  say.  I  meant  to  show 
how  different  from  your  clean-shaven  doctor  is 
the  physician  of  the  conventional  beard.  There 
is  no  trifling  with  him.  He  takes  himself  seri 
ously,  and  he  takes  you  seriously.  His  exami 
nation  is  as  thorough  as  the  stethoscope  can 
make  it ;  in  fact,  he  listens  to  your  heart-action 
long  enough  to  make  you  fear  the  worst.  This 
is  in  marked  contrast  with  the  smooth-faced 
doctor,  who,  as  a  rule,  asks  you  to  show  your 
tongue,  and  when  you  obey  he  does  not  look 
at  it,  but  begins  to  go  through  his  mail, 
whistling  cheerfully.  He  puts  such  vital  ques 
tions  as,  how  far  up  is  your  bedroom  window 
26 


THE    DOCTORS 

at  night,  and  do  you  ever  have  a  sense  of  eye- 
strain  after  reading  too  long,  and  when  you 
reply,  he  pays  no  attention.  His  entire  atti 
tude  expresses  the  conviction  that  either  you 
are  not  ill  at  all,  or  that  if  you  are,  you  are  not 
in  a  position  to  give  an  intelligent  account  of 
yourself.  That  is  not  the  case  with  the  other 
physician.  He  asks  precise  questions  and  in 
sists  on  detailed  replies.  Nothing  escapes  him. 
While  you  are  describing  the  sensations  in  the 
vicinity  of  your  left  lung,  he  will  ask  quietly 
whether  you  have  always  had  the  habit  of  biting 
your  nails. 

Under  such  sympathetic  attention  the  pa 
tient's  spirits  rise.  From  an  apologetic  state 
of  mind  he  passes  to  a  sense  of  his  own  im 
portance.  Instead  of  being  ashamed  of  his  ail 
ments  he  tries  to  describe  as  many  as  he  can 
think  of.  His  specific  complaint  may  be  a 
touch  of  sciatica,  but  he  takes  pleasure  in  re- 
27 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

calling  a  bad  habit  of  breathing  through  the 
mouth  in  moments  of  excitement,  and  a  tricky 
memory  which  often  leads  him  to  carry  about 
his  wife's  letters  an  entire  week  before  mailing 
them.  The  need  for  a  certain  amount  of  self- 
castigation  is  implanted  in  all  of  us,  and  it  is 
satisfied  in  the  form  of  confession.  Many  peo 
ple  do  it  as  part  of  their  religious  beliefs. 
Others  belabour  themselves  in  the  physician's 
office.  Men  who  in  the  bosom  of  the  family  will 
deny  that  they  read  too  late  at  night  and  smoke 
too  many  cigars  will  call  such  transgressions 
to  the  doctor's  attention  if  he  should  happen 
to  overlook  them.  I  know  of  one  man  suffer 
ing  from  neuralgia  of  the  arm  who  insisted  on 
telling  his  doctor  that  it  made  him  ill  to  read 
the  advertisements  in  the  subway  cars.  But  the 
doctor  who  wears  no  beard  does  not  invite  such 
confidences. 


IV 
INTERROGATION 

ONE  day  a  census  enumerator  in  the  employ  of 
the  United  States  government  knocked  at  my 
door  and  left  a  printed  list  of  questions  for  me  • 
to  answer.  The  United  States  government 
wished  me  to  state  how  many  sons  and  daugh 
ters  I  had  and  whether  my  sons  were  males  and 
my  daughters  females.  I  was  further  required 
to  state  that  not  only  was  I  of  white  descent 
and  that  my  wife  (if  I  had  one)  was  of  white 
descent,  but  that  our  children  (if  we  had  any) 
were  also  of  white  descent.  I  was  also  called 
upon  to  state  whether  any  of  my  sons  under 
the  age  of  five  (if  I  had  any)  had  ever  been 
in  the  military  or  naval  service  of  the  United 
States,  and  whether  my  grandfather  (if  I  had 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

one)  was  attending  school  on  September  30 
last.  There  were  other  questions  of  a  like  na 
ture,  but  these  are  all  I  can  recall  at  present. 

Halfway  through  the  schedule  I  was  in  a 
high  state  of  irritation.  The  census  enu 
merator's  visit  in  itself  I  do  not  consider  a 
nuisance.  Like  most  Americans  who  sniff  at 
the  privileges  of  citizenship,  I  secretly  delight 
in  them.  I  speak  cynically  of  boss-rule  and 
demagogues,  but  I  cast  my  vote  on  Election 
Day  in  a  state  of  solemn  and  somewhat  nerv 
ous  exaltation  that  frequently  interferes  with 
my  folding  the  ballot  in  the  prescribed  way. 
I  have  never  been  summoned  for  jury  duty,  but 
if  I  ever  should  be,  I  shall  accept  with  pride 
and  in  the  hope  that  I  shall  not  be  peremptorily 
challenged.  It  needs  some  such  official  docu 
ment  as  a  census  schedule  to  bring  home  the 
feeling  that  government  and  state  exist  for  me 
and  my  own  welfare.  Filling  out  the  answers 
30 


INTERROGATION 

in  the  list  was  one  of  the  pleasant  manifesta 
tions  of  democracy,  of  which  paying  taxes  is 
the  unpleasant  side.  The  printed  form  before 
me  embodied  a  solemn  function.  I  was  aware 
that  many  important  problems  depended  upon 
my  answering  the  questions  properly.  Only 
then,  for  instance,  could  the  government  de 
cide  how  many  Congressmen  should  go  to 
Washington,  and  what  my  share  was  of  the 
total  wealth  of  the  country,  and  how  I  con 
tributed  to  the  drift  from  the  farm  to  the 
city,  and  what  was  the  average  income  of 
Methodist  clergymen  in  cities  of  over  100,000 
population. 

What,  then,  if  so  many  of  the  questions  put 
to  me  by  the  United  States  government  seemed 
superfluous  to  the  point  of  being  absurd?  The 
process  may  involve  a  certain  waste  of  paper 
and  ink  and  time,  but  it  is  the  kind  of  waste 
without  which  the  business  of  life  would  be  im- 
31 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

possible.  The  questions  that  really  shape  hu 
man  happiness  are  those  to  which  the  reply  is 
obvious.  The  answers  that  count  are  those 
the  questioner  knew  he  would  get  and  was  pre 
pared  to  insist  upon  getting.  Harrington  tells 
me  that  when  he  was  married  he  could  not  help 
smiling  when  the  minister  asked  him  whether  he 
would  take  the  woman  by  his  side  to  be  his  wed 
ded  wife.  "  What,"  said  Harrington,  "  did  he 
think  I  was  there  for?  Or  did  he  detect  any 
sign  of  wavering  at  the  last  moment?"  What 
reply  does  the  clergyman  await  when  he  asks  the 
rejoicing  parents  whether  they  are  willing  to 
have  their  child  baptized  into  the  community  of 
the  redeemed?  What  is  all  ritual,  as  it  has 
been  framed  to  meet  the  needs  of  the  human 
heart,  but  a  preordained  order  of  question  and 
response?  In  birth  and  in  burial,  in  joy  and  in 
sorrow,  for  those  who  have  escaped  shipwreck 
and  those  who  have  escaped  the  plague,  the 
32 


INTERROGATION 

practice  of  the  ages  has  laid  down  formulae 
which  the  soul  does  not  find  the  less  adequate 
because  they  are  ready-made. 

Consider  the  multiplication-table.  I  don't 
know  who  first  hit  upon  the  absurd  idea  that 
questions  are  intended  to  elicit  information.  In 
so  many  laboratories  are  students  putting  ques 
tions  to  their  microscope.  In  so  many  lawyers' 
offices  are  clients  putting  questions  to  their  at 
torneys.  In  so  many  other  offices  are  haggard 
men  and  women  putting  questions  to  their  doc 
tors.  But  the  number  of  all  these  is  quite  in 
significant  when  compared  with  the  number  of 
questions  that  are  framed  every  day  in  the 
schoolrooms  of  the  world.  Wherefore,  I  say, 
consider  the  multiplication-table.  A  greater 
sum  of  human  interest  has  centred  about  the 
multiplication-table  than  about  all  doctors'  and 
lawyers'  and  biologists'  offices  since  the  begin 
ning  of  time.  Millions  of  schoolmasters  have 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

asked  what  is  seven  times  eleven  and  myriads 
of  children's  brains  have  toiled  for  the  answer 
that  all  the  time  has  been  reposing  in  the 
teacher's  mind.  What  is  seven  times  eleven? 
What  is  the  capital  of  Dahomey?  When  did 
the  Americans  beat  the  British  at  Lexington? 
What  is  the  meaning  of  the  universe  ?  We  shall 
never  escape  the  feeling  that  these  questions  are 
put  only  to  vex  us  by  those  who  know  the 
answer. 

I  said  that  I  am  looking  forward  to  be  sum 
moned  for  jury-duty.  But  I  know  that  the 
solemn  business  of  justice,  like  most  of  the 
world's  business,  is  made  up  of  the  mumbled 
question  that  is  seldom  heard  and  the  fixed  reply 
that  is  never  listened  to.  The  clerk  of  the 
court  stares  at  the  wall  and  drones  out  the 
ancient  formula  which  begins  "  Jusolimly- 
swear,"  and  ends  "  Swelpyugod,"  and  the  wit 
ness  on  the  stand  blurts  out  "  I  do."  The 
34 


INTERROGATION 

Chief  Justice  of  the  United  States  Supreme 
Court  asks  the  President-elect  whether  he  will 
be  faithful  to  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  of 
the  United  States,  and  the  President-elect  in 
variably  says  that  he  will.  The  candidate  for 
American  citizenship  is  asked  whether  he  hereby 
renounces  allegiance  to  foreign  kings,  emper 
ors,  and  potentates,  and  fervently  responds  that 
he  does.  When  I  took  my  medical  examination 
for  a  life-insurance  policy,  the  physician  asked 
me  whether  I  suffered  from  asthma,  bronchitis, 
calculus,  dementia,  erysipelas,  and  several  score 
other  afflictions,  and,  without  waiting  for  an 
answer,  he  wrote  "  No  "  opposite  every  disease. 
Whenever  I  think  of  the  world  and  the 
world's  opinion,  I  think  of  Mrs.  Harrington  in 
whom  I  see  the  world  typified.  Now  Mrs.  Har 
rington  is  inconceivable  in  a  scheme  where  the 
proper  reply  to  every  question  is  not  as  thor 
oughly  established  as  the  rule  for  the  proper 
35 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

use  of  forks  at  dinner.  In  the  presence  of  an 
unfamiliar  reply  to  a  familiar  question  Mrs. 
Harrington  is  suspicious  and  uneasy.  She 
scents  either  a  joke  or  an  insult;  and  we  are 
all  Mrs.  Harrington.  If  you  were  to  ask  a 
stranger  whom  did  he  consider  the  greatest 
playwright  of  all  times  and,  instead  of  Shake 
speare  or  Moliere,  he  were  to  say  Racine,  it 
would  be  as  if  one  were  to  ask  him  whether  he 
took  tea  or  coffee  for  breakfast  and  he  said 
arsenic.  It  would  be  as  though  you  asked  your 
neighbour  what  he  thought  of  a  beautiful  sun 
set  and  he  said  he  did  not  like  it.  It  would  be 
as  if  I  were  to  say  to  Mrs.  Harrington,  "  Well, 
I  suppose  I  have  stayed  quite  long  enough,"  and 
she  were  to  say,  "  Yes,  I  think  you  had  better 
be  going." 


THE  MIND  TRIUMPHANT 

ONE  night  after  dinner  I  quoted  for  Harding 
the  following  sentence  from  an  address  by 
President  Lowell  of  Harvard :  "  The  most 
painful  defect  in  the  American  College  at  the 
present  time  is  the  lack  of  esteem  for  excellence 
in  scholarship."  Thereupon  Harding  recalled 
what  some  one  had  said  on  a  related  subject: 
"  Athleticism  is  rooted  in  an  exaggerated  spirit 
of  intercollegiate  rivalry  and  a  publicity  run 
mad." 

That  night  Harding  dreamt  the  following: 

From  the  Harvard  "  Crimson  "  for  October  8, 

1937: 

"  Twenty-five  thousand  men,  women,  and  chil 
dren   in  the   Stadium  yesterday  broke  into   a 
37 


THE   PATIENT  OBSERVER 

delirium  of  cheers  when  the  Cambridge  team 
in  Early  English  Literature  won  its  fourth  suc 
cessive  victory  over  Yale.  Both  sides  were 
trained  to  the  minute,  however  different  the 
methods  of  the  two  head  coaches.  The  Har 
vard  team  during  the  last  two  weeks  had  been 
put  on  a  course  of  desultory  reading  from  Bede 
to  the  closing  of  the  theatres  by  the  Puri 
tans  in  1642,  while  Yale  had  concentrated 
on  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  and  signal 
practice. 

"  Harvard  won  the  toss,  and  Captain  Hart 
ley  led  off  with  a  question  on  the  mediae 
val  prototypes  of  Thomas  More's  '  Utopia.' 
Brooks  of  Yale  made  a  snappy  reply,  and  by  a 
dashing  string  of  three  questions  on  the  author 
ship  of  '  Ralph  Roister-Doister,'  the  sources  of 
Chaucer's  '  Nonne's  Preeste's  Tale,'  and  the  ex 
act  site  of  the  Globe  Theatre,  carried  the  fight 
into  the  enemy's  territory.  But  Harvard  held 
38 


THE   MIND   TRIUMPHANT 

well,  and  the  contest  was  a  fairly  even  one  for 
twenty  minutes.  There  was  an  anxious  mo 
ment  towards  the  end,  when  Gosse,  for  Har 
vard,  muffed  on  the  date  of  the  first  production 
of  '  The  Tempest,'  but  before  Yale  could  frame 
another  question  the  whistle  blew. 

"  In  the  second  half,  Yale  perceptibly  weak 
ened.  It  still  showed  brilliant  flashes  of  at 
tack,  but  its  defence  was  poor,  especially 
against  Brooks's  smashing  questions  on  the 
Italian  influences  in  Milton's  shorter  poems. 
Harvard  made  its  principal  gains  against 
Burckhardt,  who  simply  could  not  solve  Win- 
ship's  posers  from  Ben  Jonson  and  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher.  The  Yale  coaches  finally  took 
him  out  and  sent  in  Skinner,  the  best  Elizabethan 
on  the  scrub  team,  but  it  was  too  late  to  save 
the  day.  There  were  rumours  after  the  game 
that  Burckhardt  had  broken  training  after  the 
Princeton  contest  by  going  on  a  three  days' 
39 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

canoe  trip  up  the  Merrimac.  That,  however, 
does  not  detract  from  the  glory  of  Harvard's 
magnificent  triumph." 

From   the   Boston   "Herald"   of   October   9, 

1937: 

"  William  J.  Burns  and  Douglas  Mitchell, 
sophomores  at  Harvard,  were  arrested  last 
night  for  creating  a  disturbance  in  the  dining- 
room  of  the  Mayflower  Hotel  by  letting  loose  a 
South  American  baboon  with  a  pack  of  fire 
crackers  attached  to  its  tail.  When  arraigned 
before  Magistrate  Conroy,  they  declared  that 
they  were  celebrating  Harvard's  Early  Eng 
lish  victory  over  Yale,  and  were  discharged." 

From  the  Yale  "  News  "  of  June  12,  1940: 
"  In  the  presence  of  twenty  thousand  specta 
tors,    including   the   President    of   the   United 
States,  the  greater  part  of  his  Cabinet,  and  sev 
eral  foreign  ambassadors,  Yale's  'varsity  eight 
40 


THE    MIND    TRIUMPHANT 

simply  ran  away  from  Harvard  in  the  tenth  an 
nual  competition  in  Romance  languages  and 
philology.  Yale  took  the  lead  from  the  start, 
and  at  the  end  of  fifteen  minutes  was  ahead  by 
16  points  to  7.  .  .  .  This  splendid  victory 
is  due  in  part  to  the  general  superiority  of  the 
New  Haven  eight,  but  too  much  credit  cannot 
be  given  to  little  Howells,  who  steered  a  flaw 
less  contest.  The  Blue  made  use  of  the  short, 
snappy  English  style  of  text-book,  while  Har 
vard  pinned  its  faith  to  the  more  deliberate 
German  seminar  system.  After  the  contest  cap 
tains  for  the  following  year  were  elected.  Yale 
chose  Bridgman,  who  did  splendid  work  on 
Corneille  and  the  poets  of  the  Pleiade,  while 
Harvard's  choice  fell  on  Butterworth,  probably 
the  best  intercollegiate  expert  on  Cervantes. 
In  the  evening  all  the  contestants  attended  a 
performance  of  '  The  Prince  and  the  Peach ' 
at  the  Gaiety.  It  is  reported  that  no  less  than 
41 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

nine  out  of  the  sixteen  men  have  received  flat 
tering  offers  to  coach  Romance  language  teams 
in  the  leading  Western  universities." 

From  the  "  Daily  Princetoman  "  of  February 

13,  1933: 

"  Princeton  won  the  intercollegiate  cham 
pionship  yesterday  with  63  points  to  Harvard's 
37,  Yale's  18,  and  7  each  for  Brown,  Wil 
liams,  and  Pennsylvania.  Princeton  won  by  her 
brilliant  work  in  the  classics  and  biology.  Firsts 
were  made  by  Bentley,  who  did  the  220  lines  of 
Homer  in  29  3-5  minutes,  scanned  100  Alcaics 
from  Horace  in  62  seconds  flat,  and  hurdled 
over  nine  doubtful  readings  and  seven  lacunae 
in  the  text  of  Aristotle's  'Poetics'  in  17%, 
minutes.  Two  firsts  went  to  Ramsdell,  who 
made  only  two  errors  in  Protective  Colouration 
and  one  error  in  explaining  the  mutations  of 
the  Evening  Primrose." 


THE    MIND    TRIUMPHANT 

From  ihe  editorial  columns  of  the  New  York 
"  Evening  Post  "  for  July  7,  1933,  and 
October  11,  1938: 

(1)  "  Scholastic  competitions  have  ceased  to 
be  the  means  to  an  end  and  have  become  an 
end  in  themselves.  The  passion  to  win  has 
swept  away  every  other  consideration.  Pro 
fessionalism  has  laid  its  tainted  hand  on  the 
sports  of  our  college  youth.  High-priced  pro 
fessors  from  the  University  of  Leipzig  and  the 
Ecole  des  Hautes  Etudes  are  engaged  to  drill 
our  teams  to  victory.  Men  who  should  have 
long  ago  taken  their  Ph.D.  have  been  known 
deliberately  to  flunk  examinations  so  as  to  be 
eligible  for  the  'varsity  contests.  Promising 
students  in  the  preparatory  schools  are  bribed 
to  enroll  with  this  or  that  college.  The  whole 
problem  of  summer  mathematics  reeks  to 
heaven.  It  is  not  enough  that  a  student  during 
eight  months  of  the  year  will  put  in  all  his 
43 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

time  on  invariants  and  the  theory  of  numbers. 
Vacation  time  finds  him  at  some  fashionable 
resort,  tutoring  the  sons  of  millionaires  in  mul 
tiplication  and  quadratic  equations." 

(2)  "  Thus  our  so-called  student  '  activities  ' 
are  neither  active  in  the  true  sense,  nor  fit  for 
students.  There  has  grown  up  a  small  clan 
of  intellectual  athletes  who  win  victories  while 
thousands  of  mediocre  students,  six  feet  and 
over  and  having  an  average  weight  of  195 
pounds,  stand  around  and  cheer.  Our  student- 
managers  have  become  men  of  business, 
purely.  The  receipts  at  the  last  Harvard- Yale 
debate  on  the  popular  election  of  United  States 
senators  amounted  to  more  than  $50,000.  The 
Greek  philology  team  spends  three-quarters  of 
its  time  in  touring  the  country.  The  Evening 
Howl  prints  the  pictures  of  the  <£  B  K  mem 
bers  every  other  day.  It  is  time  to  call  a  halt." 


VI 
ON  CALLING  WHITE  BLACK 

IF  it  were  not  for  the  deadly  hatred  that  exists 
between  Bob,  who  will  be  four  years  old  very 
soon,  and  Abdul  Hamid  II,  late  Sultan  of  Tur 
key,  I  hardly  know  what  would  become  of  my 
moral  standards.  Whenever  my  sense  of  right 
and  wrong  grows  blunted;  whenever  the  inex 
tricable  confusion  of  good  and  bad  in  every 
thing  about  us  becomes  unusually  depressing, 
I  have  only  to  recall  how  virulent,  how  inflex 
ible,  how  certain  is  Bob's  judgment  on  the 
character  and  career  of  the  deposed  Ottoman 
despot. 

Bob  is  Harrington's  youngest  son.     He  and 
Abdul  Hamid  II  first  met  in  the  pages  of  a 
fat  new  history  of  the  Turkish  Revolution  hav- 
45 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

ing  a  white  star  and  crescent  on  the  cover  and 
perhaps  half  a  hundred  pictures  inside.  The 
book  immediately  supplanted  the  encylopsedia 
and  General  Kuropatkin's  illustrated  memoirs 
of  the  Russo-Japanese  War,  in  Bob's  af 
fections.  Who,  he  wanted  to  know,  was  the 
swarthy,  lean,  hook-nosed  gentleman  in  a  tas- 
selled  cap,  who  stood  up  in  a  carriage  to  ac 
knowledge  the  cheers  of  the  crowd.  That, 
Harrington  told  him,  was  a  bad  Sultan,  and 
tried  to  turn  to  the  next  picture,  which  showed 
an  unhappy-looking  Armenian  priest  casting 
his  first  vote  for  a  member  of  Parliament. 

But  the  boy  has  for  some  years  been  in  the 
stage  where  every  fact  laid  before  him  must 
be  backed  up  with  an  adequate  reason.  What 
does  a  bad  Sultan  do,  he  wished  to  know. 
Harrington  was  puzzled.  It  seemed  a  pity 
to  bring  Bob  into  touch  with  the  cruelties  and 
pains  of  life.  But  on  the  other  hand  here 
46 


ON   CALLING  WHITE   BLACK 

was  a  chance  to  inoculate  Bob  at  a  very  early 
age  with  a  hatred  for  tyranny  and  oppres 
sion,  and  a  love  for  the  principles  of  repre 
sentative  government;  and  on  the  whole  I  am 
inclined  to  think  Harrington  did  right.  In 
any  case  Harrington  told  the  boy  that  the  bad 
Sultan  was  in  the  habit  of  sending  his  soldiers 
to  shoot  people,  and  burn  down  their  homes, 
and  take  away  everything  they  had  to  eat, 
and  put  all  the  women  into  jail.  He  hesitated 
over  the  children.  It  was  out  of  the  question 
to  tell  Bob  how,  by  order  of  the  bad  Sultan, 
little  children  were  ripped  open  before  their 
mothers'  eyes,  or  had  their  brains  dashed  out 
against  the  walls.  The  little  children,  Harring 
ton  finally  told  Bob,  were  whipped  by  the 
bad  Sultan's  bad  soldiers,,  and  had  all  their  toys 
confiscated. 

But  that  apparently  was  not  enough.     Bob 
wanted  to  know  what  else  the  bad  Sultan  did 
47 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

to  the  little  children.  What  else?  Harring 
ton's  criminal  imagination  had  exhausted  itself. 
He  didn't  know,  and  he  called  upon  Bob  for 
suggestions. 

"  He  gives  them  medicine,"  said  Bob,  "  and 
sprays  their  throats  with  peroxide,  and  they 
cry."  Was  there  any  after-thought  in  that 
remark,  Harrington  wondered.  Could  it 
be  that  he  had  only  succeeded  in  arousing 
in  that  active  young  mind  the  recognition  of  a 
certain  family  resemblance  between  himself  and 
Abdul  the  Damned?  For  that  matter,  was  it 
fair  to  the  late  Commander  of  the  Faithful  to 
charge  his  name  with  a  crime  he  was  probably 
innocent  of?  But  then  again,  if  that  particu 
lar  crime  was  necessary  to  the  lesson  borne  in  on 
Bob,  why  hesitate?  So  Harrington  ponders 
a  moment  and  decides;  yes,  even  to  that  level 
of  iniquity  had  Abdul  Hamid  II  sunk.  The 
atomiser  was  one  of  the  instruments  of  tor- 
48 


ON    CALLING   WHITE   BLACK 

ture  he  made  use  of.  And  when  the  bad  Sul 
tan  is  finally  checked  in  his  nefarious  career, 
and  dragged  off  to  prison,  where  he 
gets  nothing  but  hard  bread  to  eat  and  filthy 
water  to  drink,  Bob  retains  the  impression  that 
all  this  came  about  because  the  Young  Turks 
grew  tired  of  having  their  throats  washed  with 
peroxide  solutions. 

"When  I  see  the  bad  Sultan,"  says  Bob, 
"  I  will  punch  him,  like  this,"  and  his  fist, 
shooting  out  and  up,  knocks  the  pipe  from 
Harrington's  mouth. 

"But  aren't  you  afraid  he  will  hurt  you?" 
his  father  asks. 

"  No,"  says  Bob;  "  I'll  run  away." 

And  the  boy  has  been  steadfast  in  his 
hatred.  He  meets  the  Sultan  every  night  just 
before  supper,  when  he  insists  on  being  taken 
right  through  the  fat,  red  volume  with  the  star 
and  crescent  on  the  cover;  and  every  time  the 
49 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Sultan's  face  appears  in  the  pictures,  the  boy 
smites  it  with  his  fist.  Bob  goes  to  his  meals 
with  an  excellent  appetite  engendered  by  his  vio 
lent  encounters  with  that  disreputable  monarch. 

Abdul  Hamid  II  is  in  very  bad  shape  from 
the  punishment.  Bob  has  caught  him  in  the 
act  of  addressing  the  English  members  of  the 
Balkan  Committee,  and  left  him  only  a  pair 
of  shoulders  and  one  leg.  Of  the  Sultan  driv 
ing  to  the  Selamlik  every  Friday  there  is  vis 
ible  now  only  one  of  the  carriage  horses  and 
the  fragments  of  a  cavalryman.  Nor  is  the 
physical  presentment  of  Abdul  Hamid  the 
only  thing  that  has  gone  to  pieces  under  Bob's 
unrelenting  hostility.  The  Sultan's  character 
has  been  growing  worse  and  worse  as  night 
after  night  the  boy  insists  upon  new  examples 
of  what  bad  Sultans  do. 

To  satisfy  that  inexhaustible  demand,  Har 
rington  has  shouldered  Abdul  Hamid  with  all 
50 


ON   CALLING   WHITE   BLACK 

the  sins  of  all  the  epochs  in  history.  He  has 
made  him  steep  unhappy  Christian  prisoners 
in  pitch  and  burn  them  for  torches,  and 
send  innocent  Frenchmen  to  the  guillotine,  and 
tomahawk  the  Puritan  settlers  as  they  worked 
in  the  fields.  He  has  made  him  responsible 
for  St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  and  Andersonville 
prison.  He  has  robbed  the  Czar  of  his  just 
credit  by  making  Abdul  Hamid  the  hero  of 
Bloody  Sunday  in  St.  Petersburg.  I  am  not 
sure  but  that  Harrington  has  not  laid  the  ab 
normally  high  price  of  meat  and  eggs  at  the 
Sultan's  door.  There  are  times  when  I  really 
feel  that  Harrington  should  ask  Abdul  Hamid's 
pardon. 

But  no ;  he  should  not  beg  his  pardon.  For 
that  is  just  the  point  I  set  out  to  make.  It 
is  a  moral  tonic  to  be  brought  into  touch  with 
Bob's  opinion  of  Abdul  Hamid,  and  to  get  to 
feel  that  things  are  not  all  a  hodge-podge,  in- 
51 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

differently  good  or  indifferently  bad,  as  you 
choose  to  look  at  it.  In  Bob's  world  there  are 
good  things  and  bad  things,  and  the  good  is 
good  and  the  bad  is  bad.  Bob  knows  nothing 
of  the  cant  which  makes  the  robber  monopolist 
only  the  sad  victim  of  forces  outside  his  con 
trol.  Bob  knows  nothing  of  the  sentimental 
twaddle  about  that  interesting  class  of  people 
who  are  more  sinned  against  than  sinning. 
Bob,  like  Nature,  indulges  in  no  fine  distinc 
tions.  When  he  meets  a  bad  Sultan  he  punches 
his  head.  When  he  meets  a  good  Sultan, 
nothing  is  too  good  to  believe  concerning 
him. 

And  he  accepts  the  one  as  naturally  as  he 
does  the  other.  He  has  no  moral  enthusiasms 
or  enthusiasms  of  any  kind.  It  is  merely  an 
obvious  thing  to  him  that  right  should  tri 
umph  and  wrong  should  fail.  He  does  not 
play  with  his  emotions.  I  remember  how,  one 
52 


ON   CALLING   WHITE   BLACK 

night,  in  relating  the  fall  of  Abdul  Hamid, 
Harrington  had  worked  himself  up  to  an  ex 
traordinary  pitch  of  excitement.  Never  had 
that  despot  been  painted  in  such  horrid  col 
ours;  and  after  he  had  told  how  the  palace 
guards  rose  against  the  Constitution,  and  how 
the  Young  Turks  marched  upon  Constantino 
ple,  and  how  the  craven  tyrant,  crying  "  Don't 
hurt  me,  don't  hurt  me,"  was  dragged  from 
his  bed  by  the  good  soldiers  and  clapped  into 
prison,  Harrington  turned,  all  aglow,  to  Bob, 
and  waited  for  the  boy  to  echo  his  enthusiasm. 
But  Bob  waited  till  the  cell-door  clanged  be 
hind  the  Unspeakable  Turk,  and  said :  "  Now 
tell  me  about  the  giraffe  that  fell  into  the 
water." 

I  spoke  of  the  good  Sultan.    Of  course  there 

had  to  be  one,  and  Harrington  found  him  in 

the  same  book  with  the  bad  Sultan.     And  when 

he  had  studied  the  somewhat  stolid  features  of 

53 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Mohammed  V  for  a  little  while,  it  was  inevitable 
that  Bob  should  ask  what  a  good  Sultan  did. 
Harrington  was  in  difficulties  again.  It  was 
impossible  to  explain  that  at  bottom  there 
really  is  no  such  thing  as  a  good  Sultan;  that 
they  are  as  a  rule  cruel  and  immoral,  and  al 
ways  expensive ;  and  that  at  best  they  are  harm 
less,  if  somewhat  stupid,  survivals.  But  since 
the  very  idea  of  a  bad  Sultan  demands  a  good 
one,  Harrington  tried  to  satisfy  Bob  by  in 
vesting  Mohammed  V  with  a  large  number  of 
negative  virtues.  "  A  good  Sultan  does  not 
shoot  people,  or  burn  down  houses  or  throw 
women  into  jail  or  whip  little  children."  The 
portrait  failed  to  please.  Bob's  faith  de 
manded  something  robust  to  cling  to;  and  in 
the  end  he  compelled  his  father  to  do  for  the 
good  Sultan  the  opposite  of  what  he  had  done 
for  the  bad  one.  Mohammed  V  stands  to-day 
invested  with  all  the  virtues  that  have  been 
54 


ON    CALLING   WHITE   BLACK 

manifested  on  earth  from  Enoch  to  Florence 
Nightingale. 

And  yet  of  the  two,  Bob  and  his  father, 
I  must  say  again  that  it  is  Bob  who  has  the 
more  truthful  and  healthy  outlook  upon  life, 
and  it  is  good  for  Harrington  to  rehearse  with 
him  the  history  of  the  fall  of  Abdul  Hamid  II 
three  or  four  times  a  week.  Bob  has  no  flabby 
standards.  He  wastes  no  time  in  looking  for 
lighter  shades  in  what  is  black  or  dark  spots 
in  the  white.  Bob  holds,  for  instance,  that  bad 
soldiers  shoot  down  good  people,  and  that  good 
soldiers  shoot  down  bad  people.  He  is  quite  as 
close  to  the  truth  as  I  am,  who  believe  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  good  soldier  and 
that  the  business  of  shooting  down  people, 
whether  good  or  bad,  is  a  wretched  one.  For 
all  that,  I  know  there  come  times  when  a  man 
must  take  human  life,  and  in  such  cases  Bob 
has  the  advantage  over  Hamlet  and  me.  Where 
55 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

we  falter  and  speculate  and  end  by  making  a 
mess  of  it  all,  Bob  just  punches  the  bad  Sul 
tan's  head  and  passes  on  to  the  giraffe  that 
fell  into  the  water. 


56 


VII 
THE  SOLID  FLESH 

PHYSICAL  culture  as  pursued  in  the  home 
probably  benefits  a  man's  body;  but  the  strain 
on  his  moral  nature  is  terrific.  I  go  through 
my  morning  exercise  with  hatred  for  all  the 
world  and  contempt  for  myself.  Why,  for  in 
stance,  should  every  system  of  gymnastics  re 
quire  that  a  man  place  himself  in  the  most 
ridiculous  and  unnatural  postures?  A  stout, 
middle-aged  man  who  struggles  to  touch  the 
floor  with  the  palms  of  his  hands  is  not  a  beau 
tiful  sight.  Equally  preposterous  is  the  prac 
tice  of  standing  on  one  leg  and  stretching  the 
other  toward  the  nape  of  one's  neck.  In  the 
confines  of  a  city  bedroom  such  evolutions  are 
not  only  ungraceful  but  frequently  dangerous. 
57 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Harrington  tells  me  that  every  morning  when 
he  lunges  forward  he  scrapes  the  tips  of  his 
fingers  against  the  edge  of  the  bed  and  the  tears 
come  into  his  eyes.  When  he  throws  his  arms 
back  he  hits  the  gas  jet.  Harrington's  young 
son,  who  insists  on  being  present  during  the  or 
deal,  believes  that  the  entire  performance  is  in 
tended  for  his  amusement,  and  laughs  immod 
erately.  I  cannot  blame  him.  Morning  exer 
cise  is  incompatible  with  the  maintenance  of 
parental  dignity.  Were  I  a  child  again  I  could 
neither  love  nor  respect  a  father  who  placed  two 
chairs  at  a  considerable  distance  from  each 
other  and  mounted  them  horizontally  like  the 
human  bridge  in  a  melodrama. 

I  admit,  of  course,  that  home  exercises  have 
the  merit  of  being  cheap.  No  special  apparatus 
is  required.  The  ordinary  household  furniture 
and  such  heirlooms  as  are  readily  available  will 
usually  suffice.  An  onyx  clock  will  do  instead 
58 


THE    SOLID    FLESH 

of  chest  weights.  Any  two  volumes  of  the  En- 
cyclopcedia  Britannica  will  take  the  place  of 
dumb-bells  or  Indian  clubs.  Many  a  time  I  have 
stood  still  and  held  a  bronze  lamp  in  my  out 
stretched  right  hand  for  a  minute  and  then 
held  it  in  my  left  hand  for  half  a  minute.  I 
know  of  one  man  who  skipped  the  rope  one  hun 
dred  times  every  morning.  Within  four  months 
he  had  lost  three  and  a  half  pounds,  and  driven 
the  family  in  the  flat  below  into  nervous  pros 
tration.  I  have  even  been  told  that  there  are 
systems  of  exercise  which  show  how  physical 
perfection  may  be  attained  by  scientifically 
manipulating,  for  fifteen  minutes  every  day,  a 
couple  of  fountain  pens  and  a  paper  cutter. 
But  I  cannot  reconcile  myself  to  such  methods 
because  of  the  confusion  they  introduce  into 
the  world  of  common  things.  A  table  is  no 
longer  something  to  write  upon  or  to  eat  upon, 
but  something  to  lie  down  upon  while  one  flings 
59 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

out  his  arms  and  legs  fifty  times  in  four 
contrary  directions.  A  broom-stick  is  an 
instrument  for  strengthening  the  shoulder 
muscles.  When  I  see  a  transom,  I  find  my 
self  estimating  the  number  of  times  I  could 
chin  it. 

The  intimate  connection  between  the  hygienic 
life  and  the  temptation  to  tell  lies  is  a  delicate 
subject  to  touch  upon;  but  the  facts  may  as 
well  be  brought  out  now  as  later.  People  of 
otherwise  irreproachable  conduct  will  lose  all 
sense  of  truthfulness  when  they  speak  of  phys 
ical  culture  and  fresh  air.  They  will  exag 
gerate  the  number  of  inches  they  keep  their 
bedroom  windows  raised  in  midwinter;  they  will 
quote  ridiculous  estimates  of  the  doctors'  bills 
they  have  saved;  they  will  represent  themselves 
as  being  in  the  most  incredibly  perfect  health. 
I  know  one  sober,  intelligent  business-man  who 
not  only  habitually  understates,  by  ten  degrees, 
60 


THE    SOLID    FLESH 

the  temperature  of  his  morning  tub,  but  gives 
an  altogether  distorted  impression  of  the  alac 
rity  with  which  he  leaps  into  his  bath  every 
morning,  and  the  reluctance  with  which  he 
leaves  it.  This  same  man  asserts  that  he  can 
now  walk  from  the  Chambers  Street  ferry  to  his 
office  in  Wall  Street  in  astonishing  time.  And 
not  only  that,  but  since  he  took  to  walking  as 
much  as  he  could,  he  has  cut  down  his  daily 
number  of  cigars  to  one-fourth  (which  is  un 
true).  And  not  only  that,  but  since  he  has 
gone  in  for  exercise  and  fresh  air  and  has  given 
up  smoking,  his  income  has  increased  by  at  least 
50  per  cent.,  owing  to  his  improved  health  and 
clearer  mental  vision.  But  that  again,  as  I 
happen  to  know,  is  untrue. 

But  there  is  another,  much  more  subtle  form 

of  prevarication.     Smith  meets  you  in  the  street 

and  remarks  upon  your  flabby  appearance.    He 

argues   that   you  ought   to   weigh  twenty-five 

61 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

pounds  less  than  you  do,  and  that  a  long  daily 
walk  will  do  the  trick.  "  Look  at  me,"  he  says, 
"  I  walk  ten  miles  every  day  and  there  isn't  an 
ounce  of  superfluous  flesh  on  me."  And  so  say 
ing,  he  slaps  his  chest  and  offers  to  let  you  feel 
how  hard  the  muscles  are  about  his  diaphragm. 
Of  course,  there  is  no  superfluous  flesh  on  Smith. 
And  if  he  abstained  entirely  from  physical  ex 
ertion  and  guzzled  heavy  German  beer  all  day 
and  dined  on  turtle  soup  and  roast  goose  every 
day,  and  ate  unlimited  quantities  of  pastry,  he 
would  still  be  what  he  describes  as  free  from 
superfluous  flesh.  /  call  it  scraggy.  Smith  is 
one  of  the  men  set  apart  by  nature  to  per 
petuate  the  Don  Quixote  type  of  beauty,  just 
as  I  am  doomed  with  the  lapse  of  time  to  ap 
proximate  the  Falstaffian  type.  Smith's  five 
sisters  and  brothers  are  thin.  His  father  was 
slight  and  neurasthenic.  His  mother  was 
spare  and  angular.  Little  wonder  the  Smith 


THE    SOLID   FLESH 

family  is  fond  of  walking.  Friction  and  air- 
resistance  in  their  case  are  practically  non 
existent. 

I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  to  deny  the  ancient 
tradition  that  a  sound  body  makes  a  sound  mind. 
But  I  would  only  point  out  that  we  are  just 
beginning  to  wake  to  the  truth  of  the  converse 
proposition,  that  a  sane,  equable,  easy-going 
mind  keeps  the  body  well.  Hence  there  are 
really  two  kinds  of  exercise,  and  two  kinds  of 
hygiene,  a  physical  kind  and  a  spiritual  kind. 
Which  one  a  man  will  choose  should  be  left  en 
tirely  to  himself.  It  is  only  a  question  of  ap 
proaching  the  same  goal  from  two  different 
directions.  Smith  is  welcome  to  make  himself 
a  better  man  by  exercising  his  legs  three  hours 
a  day.  But  I  prefer  to  sit  in  an  armchair  and 
exercise  my  soul.  Smith  comes  in  refreshed 
from  a  half -day's  sojourn  in  the  open  air,  and 
I  come  away  refreshed  from  a  roomful  of  old 
63 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

friends  talking  three  at  a  time  amidst  clouds 
of  tobacco  smoke. 

The  trouble  with  so  many  of  the  physical- 
culture  devotees  is  that  they  tire  out  the  soul 
in  trying  to  serve  it.  I  am  inclined  to  believe 
that  the  beneficent  effects  of  the  regular 
quarter-hour's  exercise  before  breakfast,  is 
more  than  offset  by  the  mental  wear  and  tear 
involved  in  getting  out  of  bed  fifteen  minutes 
earlier  than  one  otherwise  would.  Some  one  has 
calculated  that  the  amount  of  moral  resolution 
expended  in  New  York  City  every  winter  day 
in  getting  up  to  take  one's  cold  bath  would 
be  enough  to  decide  a  dozen  municipal  elec 
tions  in  favour  of  the  decent  candidate,  or  to 
send  fifty  grafting  legislators  to  jail  for  an 
average  term  of  three  and  a  half  years.  The 
same  specialist  has  worked  out  the  formula  that 
the  average  married  man's  usefulness  about  the 
house  varies  inversely  with  his  fondness  for  vio- 
64 


THE    SOLID   FLESH 

lent  exercise.  Smith's  dumb-bell  practice,  for 
instance,  leaves  him  no  time  for  hanging  up 
the  pictures.  After  his  long  Sunday's  walk 
he  is  invariably  too  tired  to  answer  his  wife's 
questions  concerning  the  influence  of  the  tariff 
on  high  prices. 

By  this  time  it  will  be  plain  that  I  am  no 
passionate  admirer  of  the  gospel  of  salvation 
by  hygiene.  So  many  things  that  the  world 
holds  precious  have  been  developed  under  the 
most  unhygienic  conditions.  Revolutions  for 
the  liberation  of  mankind  have  been  plotted  in 
unsanitary  cellars  and  dungeons.  Religions 
have  taken  root  and  prospered  in  catacombs. 
Great  poems  have  been  written  in  stuffy  gar 
rets.  Great  orations  have  been  spoken  before 
sweating  crowds  in  the  foul  air  of  overheated 
legislative  chambers.  Lovers  are  said  to  be 
fond  of  dark  corners  and  out-of-the-way  places. 
It  is  not  by  accident  that  children,  said  to  be 
65 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  most  beautiful  thing  in  the  world,  are  so  in 
ordinately  fond  of  dirt.  Every  great  truth  on 
its  first  appearance  has  been  declared  a  menace 
to  morals  and  society;  in  other  words,  unhy 
gienic.  And  yet  one  would  imagine  that  truth, 
from  its  habit  of  going  naked,  would  appeal 
strongly  to  the  ardent  fresh-air  practitioner. 


66 


VIII 
SOME  NEWSPAPER  TRAITS 

AT  Cooper's  house  last  winter  I  met  Pro 
fessor  Grundschnitt  of  Berlin,  who  has  been 
making  a  study  of  American  newspaper  methods 
in  behalf  of  the  German  government.  For 
some  time  after  the  professor's  arrival  in  this 
country,  he  told  me,  he  found  himself  com 
pletely  at  sea.  American  newspapers,  it  ap 
peared  to  him,  were  written  in  two  languages. 
One  was  the  English  language  as  he  had  studied 
it  in  the  writings  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  John 
Ruskin,  and  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson.  In  Amer 
ica  it  seemed  to  be  used  chiefly  by  auctioneers, 
art  critics,  and  immigrants.  The  other  was  a 
dialect,  evidently  English  in  origin,  but  suf 
ficiently  removed  from  the  parent  stock  to  be 
67 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

quite  unintelligible.  The  professor  spent  many 
painful  hours  over  such  sentences  as  "  Jeffries 
annexes  the  Brunette  Beauty's  Angora,"  and 
"  Sugar  Barons  hand  Uncle  Sam  a  lemon." 
This  dialect,  he  found,  was  extensively  employed 
by  truck-drivers,  playwrights,  and  college  stu 
dents. 

It  did  not  take  the  professor  very  long,  how 
ever,  to  overcome  this  initial  difficulty.  His 
education  proceeded  rapidly.  One  of  the  first 
things  he  learned,  so  he  told  me,  is  that  some 
American  newspapers  are  printed  in  black  ink 
and  some  in  red.  As  a  rule,  the  former  tell 
more  of  the  truth,  but  the  latter  sell  many 
more  copies.  On  Sunday,  which  in  America  is 
observed  much  more  rigorously  than  in  Europe, 
the  red  ink  predominates.  The  professor  sug 
gested  that  this  might  be  a  survival  of  primitive 
times  when  the  British  ancestors  of  the  present- 
day  Americans  tattooed  themselves  in  honour  of 
68 


SOME   NEWSPAPER  TRAITS 

their  gods.  It  is  universally  accepted  that  the 
American  business  man  reads  so  many  papers 
because  he  has  neither  the  time  nor  the  energy 
to  read  books.  But  this  would  seem  to  be  con 
tradicted  on  Sundays,  when  every  American 
business  man  reads  two  or  three  time's  the 
equivalent  of  the  entire  works  of  William 
Shakespeare.  Herr  Grundschnitt  was  inclined 
to  believe  that  carrying  home  the  Sunday  pa 
per  is  the  most  popular  form  of  physical  ex 
ercise  among  our  people. 

A  very  curious  circumstance  about  the  press 
in  all  the  great  American  cities,  the  professor 
thought,  is  that  every  newspaper  has  a  larger 
circulation  than  any  other  three  newspapers 
combined.  According  to  the  arithmetical  sys 
tem  in  use  among  all  civilised  peoples,  that 
would  be  manifestly  impossible.  But  the  pro 
fessor  imagines  that  the  methods  of  calculation 
by  which  such  results  are  obtained  are  the 
69 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

same  as  those  employed  by  politicians  in  estimat 
ing  their  majorities  on  the  eve  of  election  day, 
by  millionaires  in  paying  their  personal  taxes, 
and  by  operatic  sopranos  in  figuring  out  their 
age.  The  influence  of  a  newspaper  depends, 
of  course,  upon  its  circulation.  Such  influence 
is  exercised  directly  in  the  form  of  news  and 
editorial  comment,  and  indirectly  in  the  form 
of  wrapping  paper. 

Still  another  curious  trait  about  all  American 
newspapers,  this  learned  German  found,  is  that 
they  tell  a  story  backward.  This  arises  from 
the  desire  to  put  the  most  important  thing  first ; 
and  in  this  country  it  is  the  rule  that  the  thing 
which  happens  last  is  the  most  important.  As 
an  illustration  Herr  Grundschnitt  read  the  fol 
lowing  brief  account  clipped  from  one  of  the 
principal  newspapers  in  New  York  city : 

"  Arthur  Wellesley  Jones  died  in  the  munic 
ipal  hospital  last  night  as  the  result  of  injuries 
70 


SOME   NEWSPAPER  TRAITS 

sustained  in  an  automobile  accident.  The  end 
was  peaceful.  Mr.  Jones  was  driving  his  own 
machine  down  Fifth  Avenue  when  he  ran  into  a 
laundry-wagon  at  Twenty-first  Street.  He  had 
left  his  home  in  New  Rochelle  an  hour  before. 
Mr.  Jones  was  an  enthusiastic  motorist.  In 
1905  he  won  the  Smithson  cup  for  heavy  cars. 
In  1903  he  was  second  in  the  Westchester  hill- 
climbing  contest.  In  1899  he  helped  to  or 
ganise  the  first  road  race  in  New  York  State. 
He  was  in  Congress  from  1894  to  1898,  and  was 
elected  to  the  Legislature  in  1889,  the  same  year 
that  his  eldest  son  was  born.  Two  years  before 
that  event  he  married  a  daughter  of  Henry  K. 
Smith  of  Philadelphia.  He  was  graduated  from 
Yale,  having  prepared  for  that  institution  at 
Andover,  where  he  played  right  tackle  on  the 
football  team.  As  a  child  he  showed  a  decided 
taste  for  mechanics.  He  was  born  in  1861." 
The  daily  press  in  America,  the  professor 
71 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

went  on  to  say,  takes  extraordinary  interest  in 
visitors  from  abroad.  He  referred,  as  an  in 
stance  in  point,  to  the  recent  arrival  in  New 
York  of  a  nephew  of  the  Dalai  Lama  of  Tibet. 
As  the  ship  was  being  warped  into  the  dock,  a 
young  man  with  a  notebook  asked  the  distin 
guished  visitor  if  it  was  true  that  his  Holiness, 
the  Dalai  Lama,  had  been  found  guilty  of  con 
verting  the  temple  treasures  at  Lhassa  to  his 
own  use.  Upon  receiving  a  reply  in  the  nega 
tive,  the  young  man  asked  what  progress  the 
suffrage  movement  had  made  in  Tibet.  He  was 
told  that  inasmuch  as  every  woman  in  Tibet 
must  take  care  of  several  husbands  instead  of 
one,  as  among  the  more  civilised  nations,  women 
there  were  not  interested  in  the  question  of  votes. 
Thereupon  the  young  man  asked  whether  Tibet 
offered  a  promising  market  for  automobiles. 
He  was  pleased  to  learn  that  Tibet,  with  its  ex 
tremely  sparse  population  and  its  very  precip- 


SOME    NEWSPAPER   TRAITS 

itous  cliffs,  was  an  ideal  place  for  the  automo- 
bilist. 

These,  however,  were  superficial  characteris 
tics.  What  the  professor  was  anxious  to  learn 
was  just  how  the  newspapers  influence  the  na 
tional  life  to  the  remarkable  extent  they  un 
doubtedly  do.  He  knew,  of  course,  that  the 
Americans  are  a  free  people,  and  that  they 
select  their  own  lawmakers  and  magistrates. 
He  soon  discovered  that  when  the  people  desire 
to  choose  some  one  to  rule  over  them,  they 
name  two,  three,  or  more  men  for  the  same  of 
fice.  The  newspapers  then  proceed  to  accuse 
these  men  of  the  vilest  crimes,  and  the  one  who 
comes  out  least  besmirched  is  declared  to  be 
elected.  After  he  has  been  put  into  office  the 
people  no  longer  pay  attention  to  him,  leaving 
it  to  the  newspapers  to  see  that  he  con 
ducts  himself  properly.  When  a  high  official  is 
caught  stealing  the  people  rejoice,  because  it 
73 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

shows    that    the    newspapers    are    doing    their 
duty. 

In  the  sphere  of  social  relations,  Herr  Grund- 
schnitt  learned,  the  newspapers  are  mainly  con 
cerned  with  safeguarding  the  purity  and  in 
tegrity  of  the  home.  Most  of  them  do  this  by 
printing  full  accounts  of  all  murder  and  divorce 
trials.  The  professor  told  me  that  he  could  re 
call  nothing  in  literature  that  quite  equals  the 
white  heat  of  indignation  with  which  the  editor 
of  the  Star  once  spoke  of  "the  festering  na 
tional  sore  revealed  in  the  proceedings  of  the 
Dives  divorce  suit,  the  nauseous  details  of  which 
the  reader  will  find  in  all  their  hideous  com 
pleteness  on  the  first  three  pages  of  the  pres 
ent  issue,  together  with  all  the  photographs 
ruled  out  of  evidence  on  the  grounds  of  de 
cency."  The  press  also  serves  the  cause  of 
public  morals  by  holding  up  to  scorn  the  vices 
and  extravagances  of  the  vulgar  rich,  whose  ill- 
74 


SOME    NEWSPAPER   TRAITS 

used  millions,  as  they  hasten  to  point  out  else 
where,  are  nothing  more  than  what  any  Amer 
ican  may  look  forward  to,  provided  he  has 
courage  and  energy. 

The  same  ingenious  method  of  promoting 
virtue  by  holding  up  vice  to  obloquy  is  pursued 
in  every  other  field,  the  learned  German  told  me. 
The  newspapers  do  not  print  the  names  of  men 
who  support  their  wives,  but  they  print  the 
names  of  men  who  do  not,  or  who  support  more 
than  one.  They  do  not  publish  the  photo 
graphs  of  honest  bank  clerks,  but  of  dishonest 
ones,  and  of  these  only  when  they  have  stolen 
a  very  large  sum.  They  pay  no  attention  to  a 
clergyman  as  long  as  he  advocates  the  brother 
hood  of  man,  but  they  have  large  headlines 
about  the  minister  who  believes  in  the  moderate 
use  of  the  Scotch  highball.  They  overlook  a 
college  professor's  epoch-making  researches  in 
American  history,  and  take  him  up  when  he 
75 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

comes  out  in  favour  of  an  exclusive  diet  of  raw 
spinach.  From  the  newspaper  point  of  view,  a 
college  professor  counts  less  than  a  professional 
gambler ;  a  gambler  counts  less  than  an  actress ; 
a  good  actress  counts  less  than  a  bad  one ;  a  bad 
actress  counts  less  than  a  prize-fighter ;  a  prize 
fighter  counts  less  than  a  chimpanzee  that  has 
been  taught  to  smoke  cigarettes;  and  an  edu 
cated  chimpanzee  counts  less  than  a  millionaire 
who  suffers  from  paranoia.  By  continuously 
pondering  on  the  horrors  of  crime  and  vice  as 
depicted  in  the  newspapers,  the  American  people 
are  roused  to  such  a  hatred  of  evil  that  some 
editors  receive  a  salary  of  $100,000  a  year. 

Oddly  enough,  the  American  people  freely 
criticise  their  newspapers.  One  of  the  common 
est  charges  is  that  their  editors  write  with  great 
haste  and  little  accurate  information.  But, 
Herr  Grundschnitt  argued,  it  is  unfair  to  insist 
that  newspapers  shall  be  both  forceful  and  ac- 
76 


SOME    NEWSPAPER   TRAITS 

curate.  It  is  true  that  the  editors  who  supply 
the  American  people  with  their  opinions  think 
fast  and  write  fast,  but  it  is  absurd  to  maintain 
that  as  a  class  they  are  unreasonably  set  in 
their  own  beliefs.  Editors,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
change  their  opinions  every  little  while.  In 
such  cases  they  usually  have  no  difficulty  in 
proving  that,  while  their  present  views  are  right, 
their  previous  views  were  also  right.  This 
makes  for  consistency.  Nor  is  there  any  rea 
son  for  maintaining,  as  is  often  done,  that 
editors  are  restive  under  criticism.  The  pro 
fessor  declared  that  there  are  very  few  news 
papers  in  the  United  States  that  will  refuse  to 
print  a  letter  from  any  one  who  believes  that 
the  paper  in  question  is  the  only  one  in  town 
with  courage  and  honesty  enough  to  tell  the 
truth  and  that  it  is  the  best  newspaper  in  the 
country  at  the  price. 

As  for  the  old-fashioned  critics  who  main- 
77 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

tain  that  not  even  the  best  newspaper  tells  more 
than  half  the  truth,  my  informant  pointed  out 
that  every  town  and  village  in  the  United  States 
has  at  least  two  daily  publications.  The  con 
scientious  reader  who  buys  both  is  thus  saved 
from  error. 

When  I  rose  to  say  good-night  the  professor 
accompanied  me  to  the  door,  and  would  not  let 
me  go  till  he  had  pronounced  a  final  eulogy 
on  the  press  in  general,  and  the  American  news 
paper  in  particular.  He  expatiated  on  its  om 
nipresence.  The  printed  sheet  is  with  a  man 
when  he  wakes  in  the  morning,  and  when  he  falls 
asleep  at  night,  and  when  he  is  at  the  breakfast 
table  with  his  wife.  The  newspaper  breaks  up 
families  and  reunites  other  families,  though  it 
usually  misspells  their  names.  It  chastises  the 
rascal,  and  worries  the  honest  man.  It  can 
make  a  reputation  in  a  day,  and  destroy  a  repu 
tation  in  ten  minutes,  sending  its  owner  into  the 
78 


SOME    NEWSPAPER   TRAITS 

grave  or  upon  the  vaudeville  stage.  It  teaches 
Presidents  how  to  rule,  women  how  to  win  hus 
bands,  the  Church  how  to  save  souls,  and  middle- 
aged  gentlemen  how  to  reduce  weight  by  exer 
cising  ten  minutes  every  day.  It  knows  nearly 
everything  and  guesses  at  the  rest.  It  will  say 
almost  anything  and  publish  the  rest  at  adver 
tising  rates.  Without  it,  democratic  govern 
ment  would  be  difficult  and  travelling  in  the  Sub 
way  quite  impossible.  The  newspaper  is  the 
only  institution  since  the  world  began  that  suc 
ceeds  in  being  all  things  to  all  men  for  the  mod 
erate  sum  of  one  cent  a  day.  The  only  uni 
versal  things  that  come  cheaper,  the  professor 
told  me,  are  birth  and  death. 


79 


IX 
A  FLEDGLING^ 

A  SOPHOMORE'S  soul  is  not  the  simple  thing  that 
most  people  imagine.  I  am  thinking  now  of 
my  nephew  Philip  and  of  our  last  meeting. 
This  time,  he  was  more  than  usually  welcome. 
I  was  lonely.  The  family  had  just  left  town 
for  the  summer  and  the  house  was  fear 
fully  empty.  I  sat  there,  smoking  a  cigarette 
amid  the  first  traces  of  domestic  uncleanli- 
ness,  when  I  heard  him  on  the  stairs.  The  dear 
boy  had  not  changed.  Dropping  his  heavy 
suitcase  anyways,  he  seized  my  hand  within  his 
own  huge  paw  and  squeezed  it  till  the  tears  came 
to  my  eyes.  His  voice  was  a  young  roar.  He 
threw  his  hat  upon  the  table,  thereby  scattering 
a  large  number  of  papers  about  the  room,  and 
80 


A  FLEDGLING 

then  sat  down  upon  my  own  hat,  which  was 
lying  on  the  armchair,  on  top  of  several  July 
magazines.  I  had  put  my  hat  down  on  the 
chair  instead  of  hanging  it  up,  as  I  should  have 
done,  because  the  family  was  away  and  I  was 
alone  in  the  house. 

Might  he  smoke  ?  He  was  busy  with  his  bull 
dog  pipe  and  my  tobacco  jar  before  I  could 
say  yes.  He  explained  that  he  was  sorry,  but 
he  found  he  could  neither  read,  write,  nor  think 
nowadays  without  his  pipe.  He  admitted  that 
he  was  the  slave  of  a  noxious  habit,  but  it  was 
too  late,  and  he  might  as  well  get  all  the  solace 
he  could  out  of  a  pretty  bad  situation.  But,  as 
I  look  at  Philip,  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  his 
fine  colour  and  the  sparkle  in  his  blue  eyes  and 
his  full  count  of  nineteen  years  make  the  situa 
tion  far  less  desperate  than  he  portrays  it. 
Philip  is  not  a  handsome  lad,  but  he  will  be  a 
year  from  now.  At  present  he  is  mostly  hands 
81 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

and  feet,  and  his  face  shows  a  marked  nasal  de 
velopment.  Before  Philip  has  completed  his 
junior  year,  the  rest  of  his  features  will  have 

NX 

reasserted  themselves,  and  the  harmony  of  linea 
ment  which  was  his  when  he  was  an  infant,  as 
his  mother  ne\er  tires  of  regretfully  recalling, 
will  be  restored.  Until  that  time  Philip  must  be 
content  to  carry  the  suggestion  of  an  attractive 
and  eager  young  bird  of  prey. 

Philip  lights  pipe  after  pipe  as  he  dilates  on 
his  experiences  since  last  I  saw  him.  The 
moralising  instinct  is  very  weak  in  me.  I  can 
not  find  it  in  my  heart  to  censure  Philip's  con 
stant  mouthing  of  the  pipe.  I,  too,  smoke, 
and  I  am  not  foolish  enough  to  risk  my  stand 
ing  with  Philip  by  preaching  where  I  do  not 
practise.  Besides,  I  observe  that  the  boy 
does  not  inhale,  that  his  pipe  goes  out  fre 
quently,  and  that  his  consumption  of  matches 
is  much  greater  than  his  consumption  of 


A   FLEDGLING 

tobacco.  So  I  say  nothing  in  reproof  of  his 
pipe. 

But  it  is  different  with  his  language.  Philip, 
I  observe  regretfully,  is  profane.  I  am  not 
mealy-mouthed  myself.  There  are  moments  of 
high  emotional  tension  when  silence  is  the  worst 
form  of  blasphemy.  But  Philip  is  profane 
without  discrimination.  His  supply  of  un 
objectionable  adjectives  would  be  insufficient  to 
meet  the  needs  of  the  ordinary  kindergarten  con 
versation.  He  uses  the  same  swift  epithet  to 
describe  certain  brands  of  tobacco,  the  weather 
on  commencement  day,  the  food  at  his  eating- 
house,  his  professors  of  French  and  of  mathe 
matics,  the  spirit  of  the  incoming  freshman 
class,  and  the  outlook  for  "  snap"  courses 
during  the  coming  year. 

It  is  not  my  moral  but  my  aesthetic  sense  that 
takes  offence,  so  I  ask  Philip  whether  it  is  the 
intensity  of  his  feelings  that  makes  it  impossible 
83 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

for  him  to  discuss  his  work  or  his  play  with 
out  continual  reference  to  the  process  of  perdi 
tion  and  the  realm  of  lost  souls ;  or  whether  it  is 
habit.  No  sooner  have  I  put  my  question  than 
I  am  sorry.  There  is  nothing  the  young  soul 
is  so  afraid  of  as  of  satire.  It  can  understand 
being  petted  and  it  can  understand  being 
whipped ;  but  the  sting  behind  the  smile,  the  lash 
beneath  the  caress,  throws  the  young  soul  into 
helpless  panic.  It  feels  itself  baited  and  knows 
not  whither  it  may  flee.  I  have  always  thought 
that  the  worst  type  of  bully  is  the  teacher  in 
school  or  in  college  who  indulges  a  pretty  talent 
for  satire  at  the  expense  of  his  pupils.  It  is  a 
cowardly  and  a  demoralising  practice.  It 
means  not  only  hitting  some  one  who  is  power 
less  to  retort,  it  means  confusing  the  sense  of 
truth  in  the  adolescent  mind.  Here  is  some 
one  quite  grown  up  who  smiles  and  means  to 
hurt  you,  who  says  good  and  means  bad,  who 
84 


A  FLEDGLING 

says  yes  and  means  no.  The  young  soul  stares 
at  you  and  sees  the  standards  of  the  universe 
in  chaos  about  itself. 

And  I  feel  all  the  more  guilty  in  Philip's  case 
because  I  know  that  the  lad  speaks  only  a 
mechanical  lingo  which  goes  with  his  bull-dog 
pipe  and  the  aggressive  shade  of  his  neckwear 
and  his  socks.  The  very  pain  and  alarm  my 
question  raises  in  him  shows  well  enough  that 
his  soul  has  kept  young  and  clear  amid  his 
world  of  "  muckers "  and  "  grinds "  and 
"  cads  "  and  "  rotten  sneaks,"  and  all  the  men 
and  things  and  conditions  he  is  in  the  habit  of 
depicting  in  various  stages  of  damnation. 
"  Now,  you're  making  fun  of  me,"  says  Philip. 
"  We  fellows  don't  know  how  to  pick  out  words 
that  sound  nice,  but  mean  a — I  beg  your  pardon 
— a  good  deal  more  than  they  say.  Anyhow,  I 
suppose,  if  I  try  from  now  on  till  doomsday  I 
shall  never  be  able  to  speak  like  you." 
85 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Bless  his  young  sophomore's  soul!  With 
that  last  sentence  Philip  has  seized  me  hip  and 
thigh  and  hurled  me  into  an  emotional  whirlpool, 
where  chills  and  thrills  rapidly  succeed  each 
other.  Because  I  am  fifteen  years  older  than 
Philip  the  boy  invests  me  with  a  halo  and  bathes 
me  in  adoration.  I  am  fifteen  years  older  than 
he,  I  am  bald,  obscure,  and  far  from  prosperous, 
and  there  is  unmistakably  nothing  about  me  to 
dazzle  the  youthful  imagination.  Yet  the 
facts  are  as  I  have  stated  them.  Philip  likes 
to  be  with  me,  copies  me  without  apparently 
trying  to,  and  has  chosen  my  profession — so 
he  has  often  told  me — for  his  own.  I  am  pretty 
sure  that  he  has  made  up  his  mind  when  he  is  as 
old  as  I  am  to  smoke  the  same  brand  of  rather 
mediocre  tobacco  which  I  have  adopted  for  prac 
tical  reasons.  I  am  sometimes  tempted  to  think 
that  Philip,  at  my  age,  intends  to  be  as  bald  as 
I  am. 

86 


A   FLEDGLING 

Hence  the  alternate  thrills  and  chills.  I  am 
by  nature  restless  under  worship.  The  sense  of 
my  own  inconsequence  grows  positively  painful 
in  the  face  of  Philip's  outspoken  veneration. 
There  are  people  to  whom  such  tribute  is  as  in 
cense  and  honey.  But  I  am  not  one  of  them. 
I  have  tried  to  be  and  have  failed.  I  have 
argued  with  myself  that,  after  all,  it  is  the  out 
sider  who  is  the  best  judge;  that  we  are  most 
often  severest  upon  ourselves;  that  if  Philip 
finds  certain  high  qualities  in  me,  perhaps  there 
is  in  me  something  exceptional.  I  even  go  so 
far  as  to  draw  up  a  little  catalogue  of  my  acts 
and  achievements.  I  can  recall  men  who  have 
said  much  sillier  things  than  I  have  ever  said, 
and  published  much  worse  stuff  than  I  have  ever 
written.  I  repeat  to  myself  the  rather  strik 
ing  epigram  I  made  at  Smith's  house  last  week, 
and  I  go  back  to  the  old  gentleman  from  An- 
dover  who  two  years  ago  told  me  that  there 
87 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

was  something  about  me  that  reminded  him  of 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  By  dint  of  much  try 
ing  I  work  myself  up  into  something  of  a  glow ; 
but  it  is  all  artificial,  cerebral,  incubated.  The 
exaltation  is  momentary,  the  cold  chill  of  fact 
overtakes  me.  There  is  no  use  in  deceiving  one's 
self.  Philip  is  mistaken.  I  am  not  worthy. 

But  that  day  Philip  rallied  nobly  to  the  situa 
tion.  My  little  remark  on  strong  language  had 
hurt  him,  but  he  saw  also  that  I  was  sorry  to 
have  hurt  him,  and  he  was  sorry  for  me  in  turn. 
"  I  don't  in  the  least  mind  your  telling  me  what 
you  think  about  the  way  we  fellows  talk,"  he 
said.  "  That's  the  advantage  of  having  a  man 
for  one's  friend,  he  is  not  afraid  of  telling  you 
the  truth  even  if  it  hurts.  And  then,  if  you 
wish  to,  you  can  fight  back.  You  can't  do 
that  with  a  woman." 

"  Have  you  found  that  out  for  yourself ! "  I 
asked  him. 

88 


A   FLEDGLING 

He  looked  at  me  to  see  if  again  I  was  resort 
ing  to  irony.  But  this  time  he  found  me  sin 
cere. 

"  Women !  "  Philip  sniffed.  "  I  have  found  it 
doesn't  pay  to  talk  seriously  to  a  woman.  There 
is  really  only  one  way  of  getting  on  with  them, 
and  that's  jollying  them.  And  the  thicker  you 
lay  it  on,  the  better."  He  put  away  his  pipe 
and  proffered  me  a  cigarette.  "  I  like  to  change 
off  now  and  then.  I  have  these  made  for  me  in 
a  little  Russian  shop  I  discovered  some  time 
ago.  They  draw  better  than  any  cigarette  I 
have  ever  smoked.  Of  course,  there  are  women 
who  are  serious  and  all  that.  There  are  a  lot  in 
the  postgraduate  department  and  some  in  the 
optional  literature  courses.  But  you  ought 
to  see  them !  And  such  grinds.  None  of  us 
fellows  stands  a  ghost  of  a  chance  with  them. 
They  take  notes  all  the  time  and  read  all 
the  references  and  learn  them  by  heart.  You 
89 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

can't  jolly  them.  They  wouldn't  know  a  joke 
if  you  led  them  up  to  one  and  told  them  what 
it  meant.  I  think  coeducation  is  all  played  out, 
don't  you?  Home  is  the  only  place  for  women, 
anyhow.  Do  you  like  your  cigarette  ?  " 

The  Patient  Observer,  it  may  possibly  have 
been  gathered  before  this,  is  somewhat  of  a 
sentimentalist.  He  liked  his  cigarette  very  well, 
but  through  the  blue  haze  he  looked  at  Philip 
and  could  not  help  thinking  of  the  time — only 
two  short  years  ago — when  he,  the  Patient 
Observer,  with  his  own  eyes  saw  Philip  borrow 
a  dollar  from  his  mother  before  setting  out 
for  an  ice-cream  parlour  in  the  company  of  two 
girl  cousins.  The  Patient  Observer  has  changed 
little  in  the  last  two  years ;  his  hair  may  be  a 
little  thinner  and  his  knowledge  of  doctors'  bills 
a  little  more  complete.  But  in  Philip  of  to 
day  he  found  it  hard  to  recognise  the  Philip  of 
two  years  ago.  And  the  marvels  of  the  law 
90 


A   FLEDGLING 

of  growth  which  he  thus  saw  exemplified  moved 
the  Patient  Observer  to  throw  open  the  gates 
of  pent-up  eloquence.  He  lit  his  pipe  and  began 
to  discourse  to  Philip  on  the  world,  on  life,  and 
on  a  few  things  besides. 

And  when  it  was  time  for  both  of  us  to  go 
to  bed,  Philip  stood  up  and  said,  "  I  wish  I 
came  every  day.  You  don't  know  what  a  bore 
it  is,  listening  to  that  drool  the  '  profs  '  hand 
you  out  up  there."  His  fervent  young  spirit 
would  not  be  silent  until,  with  one  magnificent 
gesture,  he  had  swept  the  tobacco  jar  to  the 
floor  and  shattered  two  electric  lamps.  Then 
he  went  to  his  room  and  left  me  wondering  at 
the  vast  mysteries  that  underlie  the  rough  sur 
face  of  the  sophomore's  soul. 


91 


THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR— I 

"  I  HAVE  given  up  books  and  pictures,"  said 
Cooper.  "  I  now  devote  myself  entirely  to  col 
lecting  samples  of  the  world's  wisdom." 

"  Proverbs,  do  you  mean  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  No,  but  the  facts  on  which  proverbs  are 
based.  You  see,  I  grew  tired  of  pictures  when 
it  got  to  be  a  question  of  bidding  against  mil 
lionaires  for  the  possession  of  spurious  old  mas 
ters.  The  break  came  when  Downes  proved 
that  my  Velasquez  was  painted  in  1896.  His 
own,  it  turned  out,  was  done  in  1820 ;  but  even 
then,  you  see,  he  had  the  advantage  over  me. 
So  I  concentrated  on  books.  But  I  could  not 
resist  the  temptation  of  glancing  through  my 
first  editions  now  and  then,  and  the  pages  be- 
92 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — I 

gan  to  give  way.  Then  I  tried  Chinese  porce 
lains.  There,  again,  I  had  to  compete  against 
Downes,  who  ordered  his  agent  to  buy  two  hun 
dred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  Chinese  an 
tiquities  for  the  Louis  XIV.  room  in  his  new 
Tudor  palace.  And,  besides,  this  rather  dis 
concerting  thing  happened:  I  had  as  my  guest 
a  mandarin  who  was  passing  through  New  York 
on  his  way  to  Europe,  and  I  showed  him  my  col 
lection  of  jades.  6  There  was  only  one  collec 
tion  like  this  in  China  some  years  ago,'  I  told 
him.  '  Yes,'  he  replied,  *  it  was  in  my  house 
when  the  foreign  troops  entered  Peking  in  1900.' 
So  I  decided  to  sell  my  porcelains. 

"  But  of  course  I  had,  as  you  say,  to  collect 
something,  and  for  a  long  time  I  could  think  of 
no  field  in  which  a  cultivated  taste  and  personal 
effort  could  make  way  against  the  competition 
of  mere  brute  millions.  And  then,  all  at  once, 
I  hit  upon  proverbs.  The  suggestion  came  in 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

a  rather  peculiar  fashion.  It  seems  that  there 
was  an  eccentric  old  poet  on  Long  Island  who 
spent  many  years  in  collecting  all  sorts  of  in 
animate  freaks,  odds  and  ends,  and  rubbish. 
When  he  died  they  found  among  his  treasures 
a  purse  made  out  of  a  sow's  ear  and  a  whistle 
made  from  a  pig's  tail.  I  saw  my  opportunity 
at  once.  The  eccentric  old  man,  by  acquiring 
two  such  extraordinary  objets  d'art  had  in 
dulged  himself  in  a  sneer  at  the  world's  pro 
verbial  wisdom.  I  would  come  to  the  rescue  of 
our  threatened  stock  of  experience  by  gathering 
the  facts  that  upheld  it.  I  would  make  it,  be 
sides,  more  than  the  selfish  hobby  of  the  private 
collector  who  gives  the  world  only  a  very  little 
share  of  the  pleasure  he  tastes.  I  would  make 
my  collection  a  museum  and  a  laboratory.  In 
stead  of  reading  about  the  wise  ant  and  the 
busy  bee  people  should  come  and  see  them  in  the 
life.  It  was  the  difference  between  reading 
94 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — I 

about  animals  in  a  book  and  seeing  them  in 
the  life." 

"  And  have  you  succeeded  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  Beyond  all  expectations,"  he  replied. 
"  Come,  I  will  take  you  through  my  galleries," 
and  he  showed  the  way  into  the  queerest  garden 
I  have  ever  seen.  It  was  as  if  a  menagerie  and 
a  museum  had  been  brought  together  in  the  open 
air.  Between  enclosures  and  cages  which  har 
boured  animals  of  all  species,  ran  long  tables 
supporting  glass  cases  like  those  used  for  ex 
hibiting  coins  or  rare  manuscripts. 

"  Now  here,"  he  said,  stopping  before  a  small 
chest  with  a  glass  top,  "  here  is  my  collection  of 
straws." 

"Straws?"  I  said. 

"  Yes.  It  is  small  but  select.  Here,  for  in 
stance,  is  the  last  straw  that  broke  the  camel's 
back.  Some  one  suggests  that  it  must  have 
been  a  Merry  Widow  hat,  but  that's  jesting,  of 
95 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

course.  This  again  is  the  straw  that  showed 
which  way  the  wind  blew  and  enabled  a  politi 
cian  to  change  sides  and  get  a  reputation  as  a 
reformer.  We  will  see  the  politician  further 
on."  I  noticed  then  for  the  first  time  that  the 
iron-barred  cages  contained  human  beings  as 
well  as  beasts.  "  Here  is  a  handful  of  straws 
which  an  entire  conference  of  theologians  spent 
three  months  in  splitting.  This,"  pointing  to 
a  little  mannikin  about  four  inches  high,  "  is  the 
man  of  straw  whose  defeat  in  debate  gave  one 
of  our  United  States  Senators  his  brilliant  repu 
tation.  And  this,  finally,  is  a  handful  of  straws 
out  of  the  pile  on  which  Jack  Daw  slept  when  he 
gave  up  his  bed  to  buy  his  wife  a  looking-glass, 
or,  as  some  one  has  suggested,  an  automobile. 

"  And   now   observe   the   advantages   of   my 

method.     The  student,  having  been  shown  the 

straw  that  broke  the  camel's  back,  will,  if  he  is 

a  cautious  student,  well  drilled  in  the  methods 

96 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR—I 

of  modern  research,  demand  to  see  the  camel. 
Well,  here  it  is,"  and  Cooper  turned  toward  a 
large  enclosure  where  several  members  of  the 
family  Camelidos  were  peacefully  browsing,  with 
the  exception  of  one  that  lay  in  a  corner  with 
drooping  head  and  closed  eyes,  apparently  life 
less.  "  It's  been  hard  work,  of  course,  and  ex 
pensive,  keeping  a  broken-backed  camel  alive, 
but,  encouraged  by  such  examples  of  the  re 
markable  vitality  of  animals  as  may  be  seen  for 
instance  in  the  Democratic  donkey,  I  have  per 
sisted  and  succeeded.  This  rather  thin-legged 
creature  near  the  fence  is  the  camel  that  tried 
to  pass  through  the  needle's  eye,  and  the  one 
close  beside  him  is  the  one  swallowed  by  the 
man  who  strained  at  a  gnat.  Harrington  as 
serts  that  he  has  never  been  able  to  see  how 
either  phenomenon  is  possible,  but  the  problem 
is  only  half  as  difficult  as  it  appears.  For  it  is 
evident  that  if  a  camel  were  small  enough  to 
97 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

pass  through  the  eye  of  a  needle,  there  would 
be  comparatively  little  trouble  in  swallowing 
him.  And,  speaking  of  needles,  it  has  been  a 
constant  regret  that  my  collection  is  still  with 
out  a  needle  found  in  a  haystack." 

I  have  not  the  space  to  enumerate  one  tithe 
of  what  Cooper  showed  me.  As  we  hurried  past 
the  cages  containing  numerous  specimens  of 
Homo  Sapiens,  he  contented  himself  with  point 
ing  out  a  physician  who  had  failed  to  cure  him 
self  by  psycho-therapeutics ;  a  shoemaker  who 
by  sticking  to  his  last  failed  to  become  a  railroad 
president,  though  in  the  course  of  time  he  could 
tell  where  every  man's  shoe  pinched;  an  im 
porter  who,  in  defiance  of  the  Pure  Food  law, 
put  new  wine  into  old  bottles,  and  labelled  them 
Bordeaux ;  and  a  harmless-looking  man  of  mid 
dle  age,  who  continued  to  smile  and  smile,  and 
had  played  lago,  Macbeth,  and  Hamlet's  uncle. 
Before  a  sturdy -looking  man  dressed  in  working- 
98  • 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — I 

clothes  Cooper  stopped  for  a  moment  and  said, 
"  Mr.  C.  W.  Post  and  Mr.  James  Farley  assure 
me  that  this  is  the  rarest  item  in  my  collection." 

"Who  is  he?  "I  asked. 

"  It  is  a  union  labourer  who  is  worthy  of  his 
hire,"  Cooper  said. 


99 


XI 

THE  EVERLASTING  FEMININE 

I  AM  convinced  that  the  easiest  business  in  the 
world  must  be  the  writing  of  epigrams  on 
Woman.  I  have  been  reading,  of  late,  in  a  new 
volume  of  "  Maxims  and  Fables."  It  came  to 
me  with  the  compliments  of  the  author,  in  lieu 
of  a  small  debt  which  he  has  kept  outstanding 
for  several  years.  Although  the  writer  con 
tradicts  himself  on  every  third  or  fourth  page, 
I  am  justified  in  calling  the  book  a  very  able  bit 
of  work  for  the  reason  that  the  ordinary  book 
on  this  subject  contradicts  itself  on  every  other 
page.  No  one  who  glances  through  this  volume 
will  fail  to  understand  why  the  psychology  of 
Woman  should  be  a  favourite  subject  with  very 
young  and  very  light  thinkers.  It  is  the  only 
100 


EVERLASTING  FEMININE 

form  of  literature  that  calls  for  absolutely  no 
equipment  in  the  author.  Writing  a  play,  for 
instance,  presupposes  some  acquaintance  with 
a  few  plays  already  written.  No  one  can  suc 
ceed  as  a  novelist  without  a  fair  knowledge  of 
the  technique  of  millinery  or  a  tolerable  mas 
tery  of  stock  exchange  slang.  The  writer  of 
scientific  articles  for  the  magazines  must  have 
fancy,  and  the  writer  of  advertisements  must 
have  poetry  and  wit.  But  to  produce  a  book  of 
epigrams  on  Woman  requires  nothing  but  an 
elementary  knowledge  of  spelling  and  the  cour 
age  necessary  to  put  the  product  on  the  mar 
ket. 

The  secret  of  the  thing  is  so  simple  that  it 
would  be  a  pity  to  keep  it  from  the  compara 
tively  few  persons  who  have  failed  to  discover 
it.  It  consists  entirely  in  the  fact  that  what 
ever  one  says  about  Woman  is  true.  And  not 
only  that,  but  every  statement  that  can  possibly 
101 


THE  PATIENT  OBSERVER 

be  made  on  the  subject  is  sure  to  ring  true, 
which  is  much  better  even  than  being  true.  On 
every  other  subject  under  the  sun  there  is  al 
ways  one  opinion  which  sounds  a  little  more 
convincing  than  every  other  opinion.  There 
are,  for  example,  people  who  insist  that  birds  of 
a  feather  do  not  necessarily  flock  together 
more  frequently  than  birds  of  a  different  feather 
do;  and  they  will  assert  that  if  you  step  on  a 
worm  with  real  firmness  the  chances  of  his  turn 
ing  are  much  less  than  if  you  did  not  step  on 
him  at  all.  Nevertheless,  there  is  undeniably  a 
truer  ring  about  the  assertion  that  birds  do 
flock  together  than  about  the  assertion  that 
they  do  not,  and  we  accept  more  readily  the 
worm  that  turns  than  the  worm  that  remains 
peaceful  under  any  provocation.  But  this  is 
not  the  case  with  aphorisms  about  the  gentler 
sex.  There,  everything  sounds  as  plausible  as 
everything  else. 

102 


EVERLASTING  FEMININE 

Let  me  be  specific.  Right  at  the  beginning 
of  the  volume  to  which  I  have  alluded,  I  came 
across  the  following  apothegm :  "  Long  after 
Woman  has  obtained  the  right  to  vote  she  will 
continue  to  face  the  wrong  way  when  she  steps 
from  a  street-car."  "  How  true,"  I  said  to  my 
self.  Well,  a  few  days  later,  while  glancing 
through  the  pages  at  the  end  of  the  volume, 
my  eye  fell  on  the  following  lines :  "  Now  that 
Woman  is  learning  to  face  the  right  way  when 
she  steps  from  a  street-car,  she  has  demon 
strated  her  right  to  the  ballot."  "  How  true." 
But  I  had  scarcely  expressed  my  approval  when 
it  occurred  to  me  that  I  had  read  the  same  thing 
elsewhere  in  the  book.  And  when  I  searched 
out  the  earlier  passage  and  compared  the  two 
and  found  that  they  did  not  say  the  same  thing, 
but  quite  the  opposite  thing,  it  did  not  seem 
to  make  a  very  great  difference  after  all.  They 
both  sounded  plausible.  I  recited  one  sentence 
103 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

aloud  and  then  the  other,  and  they  rang  equally 
true;  and  the  more  I  repeated  them  the  truer 
they  rang. 

Delighted  with  my  chance  discovery  I  pro 
ceeded  to  make  a  thorough  study  of  "  Maxims 
and  Fables"  with  the  object  of  bringing  to 
gether  the  author's  widely  scattered  observa 
tions  on  the  same  topic  under  their  appropriate 
heads.  The  work  went  slowly  at  first ;  but  after 
a  little  while  I  found  I  could  pick  out  a  maxim 
and  turn  almost  instinctively  to  one  that  di 
rectly  contradicted  it.  The  occupation  is 
fascinating  as  well  as  instructive.  It  sheds  a 
new  light  on  the  conditions  of  human  knowledge 
and  the  workings  of  the  human  mind.  Con 
sider,  if  you  will,  the  following  half-dozen  sen 
tences  that  I  succeeded  in  compiling  in  less 
than  ten  minutes.  They  all  deal  with  the  ques 
tion  of  a  woman's  age : 

"  A  woman  is  as  old  as  she  looks. 
104 


EVERLASTING   FEMININE 

"  A  woman  is  as  old  as  she  says. 

"  A  woman  is  as  old  as  she  would  like 
to  be. 

"  A  woman  is  as  old  as  the  only  man  that 
counts  would  have  her  be. 

"  A  woman  is  as  old  as  any  particular  situa 
tion  requires. 

"A  woman  is  as  old  as  her  dearest  woman 
friends  say  she  is." 

Let  any  one  read  these  maxims  to  himself 
quietly,  and  admit  that  not  only  would  each  of 
them  impress  him  as  true  if  found  standing  by 
itself,  but  that  they  all  ring  quite  as  true  when 
taken  together.  But  that  is  by  no  means  all. 
It  may  be  shown  that  if  all  these  propositions 
are  true,  taken  singly  or  together,  the  negative 
of  each  and  all  of  these  propositions  is  also  true. 
Thus: 

"  A  woman  is  seldom  as  old  as  she  looks. 

"  A  woman  is  never  as  old  as  she  says. 
105 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  No  woman  is  just  the  age  she  would  like 
to  be. 

"A  woman  is  rarely  as  old  or  as  young  as 
the  one  man  that  counts  would  have  her  be. 

"  Few  women  are  ever  of  the  age  that  a  par 
ticular  situation  requires. 

"  No  woman  is  as  old  as  her  dearest  woman 
friends  say  she  is." 

How  all  these  opposites  can  be  equally  true,  I 
will  not  undertake  to  explain.  It  is  probably 
inherent  in  the  very  nature  of  the  subject.  The 
French,  a  people  wise  in  experience,  knew  what 
they  were  about  when  they  laid  it  down  that  if 
you  have  a  mystery  to  solve,  you  must  look  for 
the  woman.  What  they  meant  was,  that,  hav 
ing  found  a  woman,  you  may  make  any  state 
ments  you  please  about  her;  the  world  will 
accept  them  unquestioningly  and  your  puzzle 
will  consequently  be  solved. 

Sometimes,  however,  it  has  seemed  to  me 
106 


EVERLASTING  FEMININE 

that  a  possible  reason  for  this  very  curious 
fact  may  be  found  in  the  established  fashion  of 
speaking  about  men  as  individuals  and  about 
women  as  a  class  and  a  type.  And  that  class 
or  type  we  saddle  with  all  the  faults  and  virtues 
of  all  its  individual  members.  When  Smith 
tells  me  that  his  automobile  cost  him  three 
times  as  much  as  I  know  he  has  paid  for  it,  I 
record  my  impressions  by  telling  Jones  as  soon 
as  I  meet  him  that  the  man  Smith  is  an  in 
corrigible  liar.  But  when  Mrs.  Smith  tells  me 
that  her  family  is  one  of  the  oldest  in  Massa 
chusetts,  which  I  have  every  reason  to  believe 
is  not  so,  I  invariably  say  to  myself  or  to  some 
one  else,  "  A  woman's  appreciation  of  the  truth 
is  like  her  appreciation  of  music;  she  likes  it 
best  when  she  closes  her  eyes  to  it." 

Or   Smith  may   be   a   very   straightforward 
man,  given  to  plain-speaking,  and  when  you  ask 
him  how  he  liked  your  last  dinner  he  may  say 
107 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

that  in  his  opinion  the  wine  was  better  than 
the  conversation.  In  that  case  you  will  prob 
ably  tell  your  wife  that  Smith  has  shown  him 
self  to  be  an  insufferable  ass,  and  that  you  have 
decided  to  cut  his  acquaintance.  But  when 
Mrs.  Smith  tells  you  that  your  expensive  din 
ners  are  rather  beyond  what  a  man  of  your 
modest  income  should  go  in  for,  you  merely 
writhe  and  smile ;  only  on  the  train  the  next  day 
you  will  say  to  Harrington,  "Has  it  ever  oc 
curred  to  you  that  a  woman  loves  the  truth,  not 
because  it  is  the  truth,  but  because  it  hurts? 
Take  a  cigarette." 

For  these  reasons  I  would  urge  every  one  who 
can  possibly  find  time,  to  write  a  book  of  max 
ims  about  Woman,  provided  he  has  no.t  done  so 
already.  In  the  first  place,  as  I  have  shown,  it 
is  an  easy  and  delightful  occupation,  which,  for 
that  very  reason,  is  in  danger  of  becoming  over 
crowded.  But  there  is  another  reason  for 
108 


EVERLASTING   FEMININE 

losing  no  time  in  the  matter.  Now  and  then  I 
have  the  foreboding  that  some  day  in  the  near 
future  the  world  may  suddenly  lose  its  habit  of 
believing  that,  where  women  are  concerned,  two 
and  two  are  four  and  are  not  four  at  the  same 
time.  And  then  there  will  be  no  more  writing 
of  epigrams  on  Woman.  For  it  is  evident  that 
there  can  be  no  point  to  an  epigram  if  its  as 
sertions  must  be  qualified.  The  situation  will 
become  impossible  when  students  of  psychology, 
instead  of  writing,  "  Woman  likes  the  truth  for 
the  same  reason  that  she  likes  olives — to  satisfy 
a  momentary  craving,"  will  be  compelled  to 
write,  "  Some  women  tell  the  truth,  and  some 
women  do  not,"  "  Some  women  mean  yes  when 
they  say  no,  and  some  women  mean  no,"  "  Some 
women  think  with  their  hearts,  and  some  think 
with  their  minds."  That  little  word  "  some  " 
will  settle  the  epigram  writer's  business,  and  an 
interesting  form  of  literature  will  disappear. 
109 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Not  that  in  some  respects  its  disappearance 
will  fail  to  arouse  regret.  These  books  amused 
very  many  people  in  the  writing,  and  they 
never  did  very  much  harm.  And  it  is  some 
thing  to  have  a  universal  topic  that  every  one 
can  write  on,  just  as  it  is  stimulating  to  have 
a  universal  appetite  like  eating,  or  a  universal 
accomplishment  like  walking.  How  many  other 
subjects  besides  Woman  have  we  on  which  the 
schoolboy  and  the  sage  can  write  with  equal 
confidence,  fluency,  and  approach  to  the  truth? 
Possibly  even  women  will  regret  that  they  are 
no  longer  the  subject  of  universal  comment. 
Who  knows?  A  woman  will  forgive  injury,  but 
never  indifference. 


110 


XII 
THE  FANTASTIC  TOE 

WHEN  we  reach  the  year  1910  [Harding 
dreamt  he  was  reading  in  the  Weekly  Review 
for  1952],  we  find  the  art  of  dancing  well  on 
its  way  toward  establishing  itself  as  the  pre 
dominant  mode  of  expression.  The  next  few 
years  marked  a  tremendous  advance.  The 
graceful  danseuses  who  interpreted  Mendels 
sohn's  "  Spring  Song,"  Tchaikovsky's  Sixth 
Symphony,  and  Shakespeare's  "  Tempest " 
were  the  pioneers  of  a  vast  movement.  We  can 
do  nothing  better  than  recall  a  few  typical  pub 
lic  performances  given  in  New  York  during  the 
season  of  1912-13. 

In  a  splendid  series   of  matinees   extending 
over  two  months,  Professor  William  P.  Jones 
111 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

danced  the  whole  of  Gibbon's  "  Decline  and 
Fall  of  the  Roman  Empire."  The  first  two  vol 
umes  were  danced  in  slow  time,  to  the  accom 
paniment  of  two  flutes  and  a  lyre.  The  poses 
were  statuesque  rather  than  graceful,  and  the 
gestures  had  in  them  a  great  deal  of  the 
antique.  But,  beginning  with  the  story  of  the 
barbarian  invasions  in  the  third  volume,  Pro 
fessor  Jones's  interpretation  took  on  a  fury 
that  was  almost  bacchantic.  The  sack  of 
Rome  by  the  Vandals  in  the  year  451  was  pic 
tured  in  a  veritable  tempest  of  gyrations, 
leaps,  and  somersaults.  The  subtle  and  hidden 
meanings  of  the  text  called  for  all  the  resources 
of  the  Professor's  eloquent  legs,  arms,  shoul 
ders,  lips,  and  eyes.  A  certain  obscure  passage 
in  the  life  of  Attila  the  Hun,  which  had  long 
been  a  puzzle  to  students  of  Gibbon,  was  for 
the  first  time  made  clear  to  the  average  man 
when  Professor  Jones,  standing  on  one  foot, 


THE    FANTASTIC    TOE 

whirled  around  rapidly  in  one  direction  for  five 
minutes,  and  then,  instantly  reversing  himself, 
spun  around  for  ten  minutes  in  the  opposite 
direction. 

In  the  ballroom  of  the  Hotel  Taftoftia,  dur 
ing  Christmas  week,  William  K.  Spriggs, 
Ph.D.,  held  a  number  of  fashionable  audiences 
spellbound  with  his  marvellously  lucid  dances  in 
Euclid  and  Algebra  up  to  Quadratics.  Per 
haps  the  very  acme  of  the  Terpsichorean  art 
was  attained  in  the  masterly  fluency  of  body 
and  limbs  with  which  Mr.  Spriggs  demon 
strated  that  the  sum  of  the  angles  in  any  tri 
angle  is  equal  to  two  right  angles.  In  Pitts- 
burg  Mr.  Spriggs  is  said  to  have  moved  an 
audience  to  tears  when,  by  an  original  combina 
tion  of  the  Virginia  reel,  the  two-step,  and  the 
Navajo  snake  dance,  he  showed  that  if  a*  + 
y*  —  25  and  x*  —  y*  =  25,  x  equals  5  and  y 
equals  zero.  All  the  pride  and  selfishness  of 
113 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

oc,  all  the  despair  of  y,  were  mirrored  in  the 
dancer's  play  of  features.  The  spectators 
could  not  help  pondering  over  the  seeming  law 
of  injustice  that  rules  the  world.  Why  should 
x  be  everything  in  the  equations  and  y  noth 
ing?  Why  should  «/'s  nonentity  be  used  even 
to  set  off  the  all  importance  of  x?  But  they 
found  no  answer.  On  the  other  hand,  a  large 
number  of  college  freshmen  who  had  failed  on 
their  entrance  mathematics  found  no  difficulty 
in  passing  off  their  conditions  after  attending 
three  performances  of  Mr.  Spriggs's  dance. 

We  can  give  only  the  briefest  mention  to  an 
entire  school  of  experts  and  scientists  who 
helped  to  make  the  season  of  1912-13  memo 
rable  in  the  annals  of  the  greatest  of  all  arts. 
For  a  solitary  illustration  we  may  take  Mr. 
Boom,  who,  at  the  annual  meeting  of  the 
American  Zoological  Association,  danced  his 
monumental  two-volume  work  entitled,  "  The 


THE    FANTASTIC    TOE 

Variations  of  the  Alimentary  Canal  in  the 
Frogs  and  Toads."  This  dance  was  subse 
quently  repeated  before  several  crowned  heads 
of  Europe. 

An  event  of  more  than  ordinary  interest  was 
the  debate  between  Senators  Green  and  Ham 
mond  on  the  question  whether  the  United  States 
should  establish  a  protectorate  over  Central 
America.  Senator  Green  danced  for  the  af 
firmative  and  Senator  Hammond  danced  for 
the  negative.  Both  gentlemen  had  an  inter 
national  reputation.  Senator  Green's  war- 
dance  in  the  Senate  on  the  Standard  Oil  Com 
pany  is  still  spoken  of  in  Washington  as  the 
most  striking  rough-and-tumble  exhibition  of 
recent  years.  Senator  Hammond  is  an  ex 
ponent  of  a  style  which  lays  greater  stress  on 
finesse  than  on  vigour.  In  a  single  session  of 
the  Senate  he  is  said  to  have  sidestepped  nearly 
a  dozen  troublesome  roll-calls  without  arous- 
115 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

ing  any  appreciable  dissatisfaction  among  his 
constituents.  Before  a  popular  jury,  however, 
Senator  Green's  Cossack  methods  were  likely  to 
carry  greater  conviction.  And  that  is  what  hap 
pened  in  the  great  debate  we  have  referred  to. 
Senator  Hammond  appeared  on  the  platform 
in  a  filmy  costume  made  up  of  alternate  strips 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  and 
the  Monroe  Doctrine.  Wit,  sarcasm,  irony 
followed  one  another  in  quick  succession  over 
his  mobile  features  and  fairly  oozed  from  his 
fingers  and  toes.  Yet  it  was  evident  that  while 
he  could  appeal  to  the  minds  of  the  spectators 
he  had  no  power  to  sway  their  emotions.  It  was 
different  with  Senator  Green.  A  thunderous 
volume  of  applause  went  up  the  moment  he 
appeared  on  the  stage,  booted  and  spurred  and 
heavily  swathed  in  American  flags.  His  tri 
umph  was  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  scene 
that  ensued  when  Senator  Green  concluded  his 
116 


THE    FANTASTIC    TOE 

argument  by  leaping  right  over  the  table  and 
pouring  himself  out  a  glass  of  ice-water  on 
the  way,  simply  beggars  description. 

No  one  to-day  can  possibly  foresee  [wrote 
the  critic  of  the  Weekly  Review]  to  what 
heights  the  dance,  as  the  expression  of  all  life, 
will  be  carried.  We  can  only  call  attention  to 
the  plans  recently  formulated  by  one  of  our 
leading  publishers  for  a  library  of  the  world's 
best  thought,  to  be  issued  at  a  price  that  will 
bring  it  within  the  reach  of  people  of  very 
moderate  means.  The  library  will  consist  of 
bound  volumes  of  photographs  showing  the 
world's  greatest  dancers  in  their  interpreta 
tion  of  famous  authors.  Twenty  young  women 
from  the  Paris  and  St.  Petersburg  conserva 
tories  of  dancing  have  already  been  engaged. 
Among  other  works  they  will  dance  the  Psalms 
and  Ecclesiastes,  the  second  book  of  the  Iliad, 
"  GEdipus  the  King,"  the  fifth  Canto  of  Dante's 
117 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"Inferno,"  Spinoza's  "Ethics,"  "Hamlet," 
Rousseau's  "  Confessions,"  "  Mother  Goose," 
Tennyson's  "  Brook  "  and  the  "  Charge  of  the 
Light  Brigade,"  Burke's  "  Speech  on  Concilia 
tion,"  "  Alice  in  Wonderland,"  the  "  Pickwick 
Papers,"  the  Gettysburg  Address,  Darwin's 
"  Origin  of  Species,"  and  Mr.  Dooley. 


118 


XIII 
ON  LIVING  IN  BROOKLYN 

PERHAPS  the  principal  charm  about  living  in 
Brooklyn  lies  in  the  fact  that  strangers  can  find 
their  way  there  only  with  extreme  difficulty. 
The  streets  in  Brooklyn  are  to  me  a  perpetual 
source  of  joy  and  wonderment.  Like  the  city 
itself,  they  have  kept  the  slow-paced  habits 
of  a  former  age.  No  city  is  more  easy  to  be 
lost  in,  and  Brooklyn  is  at  all  times  full  of 
people  from  across  the  river,  who  ask  the  way 
to  Borough  Hall.  For  that  matter,  one  may 
easily  be  lost  on  Staten  Island,  where  the  in 
habitants  are  reputed  to  pass  the  pleasant  sum 
mer  evenings  in  guiding  strangers  to  the  trol 
ley  lines.  But  a  person  naturally  expects  to 
lose  his  bearings  on  Staten  Island.  On  the 
119 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

other  hand,  to  be  lost  in  Brooklyn  irritates  as 
well  as  confuses.  It  is  like  starving  in  the 
midst  of  plenty.  One  always  has  the  choice 
of  half  a  dozen  surface  cars,  but  one  is 
always  sure  to  be  directed  to  the  wrong 
one. 

So  I  repeat :  Brooklyn's  tangled  streets  serve 
their  highest  purpose  in  safeguarding  its  in 
habitants  against  the  unwelcome  visitor.  Be 
cause  of  our  American  good  nature  we  are 
always  inviting  people  to  call;  and  when  they 
accept  we  immediately  feel  sorry.  It  is  a  law 
with  us  that  if  two  utterly  unsympathetic  per 
sons  meet  by  chance  at  the  house  of  a  common 
friend,  they  shall  insist  on  having  each  other 
to  dinner  on  the  following  two  Sundays.  Or, 
again,  you  may  be  shaking  hands  with  a  very 
dear  friend  in  the  presence  of  a  third  person 
whom  you  dislike.  And  you  are  extremely 
anxious  to  have  your  friend  come  up  for  tea 
120 


ON   LIVING   IN   BROOKLYN 

on  Sunday,  and  you  cannot  do  it  without  ask 
ing  the  other  man. 

Under  such  circumstances,  it  is  well  to  live 
in  Brooklyn.  All  you  need  say  then  to  the 
person  you  have  an  aversion  for  is :  "I  should 
be  delighted  to  have  you  call  on  us  Sunday 
afternoon.  We  live  in  Brooklyn,  you  know,  at 
No.  125  Bowdoin  Place."  You  may  then  go 
home  in  peace,  confident  that  your  undesired 
visitor  will  never  find  you.  At  eight  o'clock  on 
Sunday  night  he  will  be  wearily  asking  a  po 
liceman  on  Flatbush  Avenue  what  the  short 
est  way  is  to  Borough  Hall.  Long  before  that 
he  will  have  given  up  hope  of  finding  No.  125 
Bowdoin  Place.  His  only  object  is  to  get  home 
before  midnight.  Now  it  is  plain  that  such 
an  excellent  defence  against  unpleasant  people 
is  unavailable  in  Manhattan.  Ask  a  man  to 
look  you  up  at  No.  952  West  One  Hundred 
and  Twelfth  Street,  and  though  your  heart 
121 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

loathes  him,  you  shall  not  escape.  But  in 
Brooklyn  you  are  safe  until  the  moment  your 
doorbell  actually  rings.  For  even  if  your 
visitor  should  find  Bowdoin  Place,  many  streets 
in  Brooklyn  have  two,  three,  or  four  systems  of 
numbering.  Some  will  maintain  that  it  is  not 
rigidly  honest  to  give  a  stranger  your  Brooklyn 
address  without  giving  him  detailed  directions 
for  finding  his  way  from  the  station,  illustrating 
your  argument  with  a  sketch  map.  But  there 
will  always  be  Puritan  consciences. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  some  of  the  kindest  and 
most  enlightened  people  I  know  live  in  Brook 
lyn.  And  I  cannot  see  why  that  in  itself  should 
make  them  a  subject  for  general  satire.  I  have 
been  told  that  a  professor  at  Harvard  has  re 
cently  made  the  calculation  that  the  drama  and 
the  art  of  conversation  in  America  would  be 
poorer  by  S3  1-3  per  cent,  if  the  joke  about 
living  in  Brooklyn  were  to  disappear.  When  a 
122 


ON   LIVING   IN   BROOKLYN 

visitor  from  Brooklyn  drops  in  unexpectedly  at 
a  Harlem  flat,  the  proper  thing  for  the  host 
to  say  is,  "  Well,  well,  what  a  task  it  must  have 
been  to  find  your  way  out,"  and  when  the  vis 
itor  starts  for  home  his  host  remarks,  "  Sorry 
you  can't  stay;  but  we  all  know  how  it  is — 
in  the  midst  of  life  you  are  in  Brooklyn.  Good 
night." 

Of  course  I  don't  mean  to  deny  that  the 
people  who  live  in  Brooklyn  are  themselves 
largely  responsible  for  the  perpetuation  of  the 
silly  jest.  They  subscribe  to  it  in  a  spirit  of 
meekness  that  is  characteristically  local.  Ask 
a  man  from  Cherry  Springs  or  Binghamton 
where  is  his  home  and  he  will  quietly  say, 
Cherry  Springs  or  Binghamton,  as  the  case  may 
be.  But  the  resident  of  Brooklyn  is  apologetic 
from  the  start.  He  anticipates  criticism  by 
saying,  "  Well,  you  know,  /  live  in  Brooklyn," 
and  he  looks  at  you  in  tremulous  expectation  of 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  usual  condolences.  If  by  any  chance  one 
should  omit  the  traditional  reply,  the  man  from 
Brooklyn  begins  to  fear  the  worst.  On  both 
sides  of  the  East  River  the  principle  seems  to 
be  accepted  that  inasmuch  as  there  are  places 
like  Cherry  Springs  or  Binghamton  there  must 
be  people  who  live  in  them,  but  that  it  is  by 
definition  impossible  to  bring  forward  a  valid 
reason  why  one  should  live  in  Brooklyn. 

The  question  is  really  a  complicated  one. 
Harlem's  disapproval  of  Brooklyn  is  not  of  a 
piece  with  Harlem's  disapproval  of  localities  out 
side  itself.  Living  in  Brooklyn  is  something 
utterly  different  from  living  in  New  Jersey  or 
the  Bronx.  New  Jersey  and  the  Bronx  are  so 
entirely  out  of  the  ordinary  that  they  call  for 
no  explanation.  Living  there  has  at  least  the 
merit  of  originality.  A  great  poet  might 
choose  to  live  in  the  Bronx.  Minor  poets  have 
been  known  to  commute  across  the  Hudson. 


ON    LIVING   IN   BROOKLYN 

But  Brooklyn  cannot  be  dismissed  so  easily. 
She  is  too  big,  too  close,  and,  for  all  her  timid 
ity,  too  contented.  Her  people  come  under  the 
head  of  those  who  ought  to  know  better  and  do 
not  try.  Thus,  while  living  in  New  Jersey  is 
a  matter  of  taste,  and  living  in  the  Bronx  is 
a  matter  of  necessity,  living  in  Brooklyn  is  a 
matter  of  habit. 

And  a  fine,  rich,  ripe  old  habit  it  is,  and  a 
precious  thing  in  a  modern,  shouting  world  that 
has  no  habits  but  only  impulses  and  vices.  Let 
me  confess :  I  like  Brooklyn,  and  I  like  to  dream 
of  going  to  live  there  some  day.  And  possibly 
I  would  go  if  it  were  not  for  the  desire  of  keep 
ing  the  project  before  me  as  one  of  the  few 
ideals  I  have  retained  in  life.  I  like  Brooklyn's 
shapeless  rotundity  as  contrasted  with  our 
abominable  rectangular  distances  in  Manhattan. 
I  like  it  because  it  sprawls  low  against  the 
ground  instead  of  clawing  up  into  the  sky. 
125 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Manhattan  is  solid  with  brick  and  steel  from 
river  to  river.  Brooklyn  ambles  on  peacefully 
till  it  comes  to  a  region  of  sand  lots  or  a  marsh 
or  a  creek,  and  stops.  Half  a  mile  further  on 
it  resumes  its  gentle  dreams  of  progress  and 
wanders  north,  or  south,  or  east,  as  the  fancy 
seizes  it.  It  runs  into  blind  corners,  it  de 
bouches  upon  ravines  and  woodland  strips,  it 
hears  the  echoes  of  ocean  on  the  beaches.  It 
is  leisure;  it  is  peace;  it  is  Brooklyn. 

At  the  same  time  it  is  well  to  remember  that 
Brooklyn  is  something  more  than  a  geograph 
ical  fact.  Brooklyn  describes  a  scheme  of  life 
and  a  condition  of  the  mind.  The  life  there  is 
like  a  page  from  yesterday.  People  who  live 
in  Brooklyn  organise  reading  circles.  They 
attend  lectures  on  the  Wagnerian  music  drama. 
They  have  retained  progressive  euchre  and  the 
strawberry  festival  as  essential  ingredients  of 
religion.  They  are  extremely  fond  of  going 
126 


ON   LIVING   IN   BROOKLYN 

on  long  excursions  into  the  country  in  early 
spring.  They  make  it  a  habit  to  walk  across 
the  bridge  on  their  way  home  in  the  evening, 
and  they  speak  with  great  feeling  of  the  beau 
tiful  effect  when  New  York's  high  buildings 
flash  into  banked  masses  of  flame  in  the  fall 
ing  dusk.  People  who  live  in  Brooklyn  take 
pride  in  keeping  up  old  friendships  and  in  dress 
ing  without  ostentation.  There  are  old  gentle 
men  who  use  only  the  ferries  in  coming  to  New 
York,  because  they  regard  the  bridges  as  a 
novelty  open  to  the  suspicion  of  being  unsafe. 
And  yet,  as  I  have  said,  Brooklyn  is  rather 
a  condition  than  a  concrete  fact.  I  believe 
every  great  Babylon  has  its  neighbouring 
Brooklyn.  London  has  it;  Boston  has  it; 
Paris  has  it ;  even  Chicago  has  it.  And  the  line 
of  demarcation  between  what  is  Brooklyn  and 
what  is  not  Brooklyn  is  not  always  a  sharp 
one.  There  are  many  people  in  Manhattan  who 
127 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

at  heart  are  residents  of  Brooklyn.  Such  peo 
ple,  though  they  live  in  Harlem,  avoid  the  ex 
press  trains  in  the  Subway  on  account  of  the 
crush.  They  visit  the  Museum  of  Natural  His 
tory  on  Sunday  and  the  Metropolitan  Museum 
of  Art  on  legal  holidays  and  extraordinary  oc 
casions.  They  cross  the  Hudson  and  walk  on 
the  Palisades.  They  bring  librettos  to  the 
opera  and  read  them  in  the  dark,  thus  missing 
a  great  deal  of  what  passes  on  the  stage.  On 
the  other  hand,  you  will  find  people  in  Brook 
lyn  whose  spirit  is  totally  alien  to  the  place. 
They  want  to  boost  Brooklyn  and  boom  it  and 
push  it  and  make  it  the  most  important  borough 
in  Greater  New  York,  and  develop  its  harbour 
facilities,  and  establish  a  great  university,  and 
double  the  assessed  value  of  real  estate  within 
five  years.  Such  people  are  in  Brooklyn,  but 
not  of  it. 

And  that  is  why  Brooklyn  has  so  strong  a 
128 


ON   LIVING   IN   BROOKLYN 

hold  on  me.  I  like  it  because  it  has  so  many 
wonderful,  valuable,  common  things  in  it.  In 
Brooklyn  there  are  people,  churches,  baby-car 
riages,  bay-windows,  butchers'  boys  carrying 
baskets  and  whistling,  policemen  who  misdirect 
strangers,  vacant  lots  where  boys  play  baseball, 
small  tradesmen,  overhead  trolleys,  quiet  streets 
tucked  away  between  parallel  lines  of  clanging 
elevated  railway,  an  Institute  of  Arts,  and  old 
gentlemen  who  write  letters  to  the  newspapers. 
I  like  Brooklyn  because  it  hasn't  the  highest 
anything,  or  the  biggest  anything,  or  the  rich 
est  anything  in  the  world. 


129 


XIV 
PALLADINO  OUTDONE 

HARDING  spent  one  long  winter  night  in  reading 
the  report  of  a  select  committee  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Recreation  which  placed  on  record 
no  less  than  half  a  dozen  absolutely  authenti 
cated  cases  of  material  objects  being  moved 
through  space  by  some  mysterious  agency  other 
than  physical.  The  report,  as  it  took  shape  in 
Harding's  dreams  that  night,  was  as  follows : 

In  the  first  experiment  the  medium  was  an 
ordinary  American  citizen.  The  precautions 
against  the  slightest  bodily  movement  on  his 
part  were  perfect.  Mr.  Joseph  G.  Cannon 
planted  both  of  his  feet  on  the  medium's  left 
foot  and  seized  his  left  hand  in  both  his  own. 
Senator  Aldrich  did  the  same  on  the  other  side. 
130 


PALLADINO   OUTDONE 

The  Honourable  Sereno  E.  Payne  grasped  the 
medium  by  the  throat,  the  Honourable  John 
Dalzell  straddled  on  his  chest,  Senator  Burrows 
of  Michigan  strapped  his  ankles  to  the  chair, 
and  Senator  Scott  of  West  Virginia  thrust  a 
gag  into  his  mouth.  As  a  further  precaution, 
before  the  seance  began,  a  representative  of  the 
Sugar  Trust  went  through  the  medium's  pock 
ets.  The  medium  struggled  and  groaned  and 
made  other  signs  of  distress,  but  at  all  times 
remained  under  absolute  control.  Yet  it  is  a 
fact  that,  in  spite  of  all  restraints  imposed 
upon  him,  this  ordinary  American  citizen  did 
succeed  in  raising  a  family  of  two  sons  and  a 
daughter  and  even  in  sending  the  eldest  child 
to  college.  At  various  times  one  even  caught 
sight  of  a  loaf  of  bread  or  a  pair  of  shoes 
sailing  through  the  air,  and  once,  for  a  mo 
ment,  the  Committee  distinctly  smelt  roast  tur 
key  with  cranberry  sauce.  At  the  end  of  the 
131 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

seance  the  medium  was  in  a  pitiful  state  of  ex 
haustion,  but  declared  that  he  was  quite  ready 
to  go  on. 

In  the  second  experiment  the  Committee  made 
use  of  the  Mayor  of  one  of  our  large  cities 
and  of  the  boss  of  the  party  to  which  the  Mayor 
belonged.  The  boss  acted  as  medium,  being 
securely  strapped  into  a  chair  about  three  feet 
away  from  another  chair,  on  which  the  Mayor 
was  sitting,  blindfolded.  Again  the  standard 
precautions  against  fraud  were  gone  through, 
but  this  time  the  medium's  efforts  met  with 
almost  immediate  response.  At  the  merest 
droop  of  the  boss's  right  eyelid,  the  Mayor 
leaped  up  from  his  chair  and  turned  completely 
around.  The  boss  smiled  faintly,  whereupon 
the  Mayor  balanced  himself  for  3  minutes  and 
42  seconds  on  his  right  foot  and  for  2  min 
utes  and  35  seconds  on  his  left  foot,  and  then 
began  to  run  about  the  room  on  all-fours  in  an 
132 


PALLADINO   OUTDONE 

amusing  imitation  of  a  spaniel  fetching  and 
carrying  for  his  master.  The  boss  inserted  the 
point  of  his  tongue  into  his  cheek  and  with 
drew  it  again,  repeating  the  process  several 
times  in  rapid  succession.  In  response,  the 
Mayor's  face  went  into  a  series  of  spasmodic 
smiles  and  frowns  that  aroused  general  laugh 
ter.  At  the  conclusion  of  the  performance, 
the  boss  gently  clicked  his  tongue  against  his 
palate,  and  the  Mayor  promptly  stood  on  his 
head  in  the  middle  of  the  floor. 

A  somewhat  similar  experiment  was  concerned 
with  a  magazine  editor  and  a  life-size  mannikin 
made  up  to  resemble  a  muckraker.  The  editor 
and  the  lay  figure  sat  facing  in  opposite  direc 
tions  at  a  distance  of  about  ten  feet.  The 
editor,  who  acted  as  medium,  was  holding  the 
telephone  receiver  with  one  hand  and  signing 
checks  with  the  other,  so  that  there  could  be 
no  question  of  manual  manipulation  on  his 
133 


THE   PATIENT  OBSERVER 

part.  Neither  could  his  feet  come  into  play, 
because  they  were  in  full  view  on  his  desk.  The 
telepathy  hypothesis  was  eliminated  because,  in 
the  first  place,  the  mannikin  had  no  mind,  of 
course,  and  in  the  second  place,  the  editor 
changed  his  own  mind  so  fast  that  no  external 
mind  could  possibly  keep  up  with  it.  The  results 
were  gratifying.  The  editor  took  a  slip  of  pa 
per  and  wrote  a  few  words  upon  it.  Immedi 
ately  the  stuffed  figure  began  to  shout, "  Murder ! 
Fire!  Thieves!  Help!  Murder!  Fire!  Thieves! 
Help !  Murder !  "  at  intervals  of  two  seconds. 
The  editor  wrote  something  on  another  slip  of 
paper,  and  the  mechanical  figure  went  through 
a  most  complex  series  of  movements.  First  it 
seized  a  pair  of  paint  brushes  and  began  to 
paint  all  the  white  objects  in  the  room  black 
and  all  the  black  objects  white.  Then  it  went 
through  the  motions  of  playing,  for  a  few  min 
utes,  upon  a  typewriter.  Then  it  seized  a  pair 
134 


PALLADINO   OUTDONE 

of  shears  and  set  to  work  clipping  solid  pages 
from  books  and  magazines.  Then  it  copied  a 
long  column  of  figures  from  an  almanac  and 
added  them  up  wrong.  Then  it  drew  a  memory 
sketch  of  an  English  statesman,  and  put  the 
wrong  name  under  it.  The  editor  assured  the 
Committee  that  he  could  continue  the  process 
for  hours  at  will. 

An  excellent  seance  was  one  in  which  the 
medium  was  a  man  very  near  the  top  in  Ameri 
can  finance.  The  rest  of  the  group  forming 
the  circle  around  the  table  were  plain  American 
citizens  of  the  type  described  in  the  first  ex 
periment.  The  medium  was  securely  roped  in 
his  chair  with  anti-Trust  laws,  anti-rebating 
laws,  insurance  laws,  banking  laws,  franchise 
laws,  etc.  Yet  no  sooner  were  the  lights  turned 
down  than  the  phenomena  began.  John  Smith, 
on  the  right  of  the  medium,  suddenly  felt  a 
sharp  blow  on  the  neck.  As  he  turned  around 
135 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

instinctively  a  ghostly  hand  snatched  away  his 
pocket-book  and  the  sound  of  mocking  laugh 
ter  could  be  plainly  heard  from  the  dark  cab 
inet.  Another  weird  hand  pulled  Thomas 
Jones's  insurance  policy  out  of  his  breast 
pocket,  dangled  it  in  the  air  just  out  of  his 
reach,  and  then  flung  it  back  at  him.  Later 
when  Jones  looked  at  his  policy  he  found  that 
its  face  value  had  been  cut  down  one-half. 
James  Robinson  all  at  once  began  to  feel  his 
shoe  pinch,  and  could  not  discover  the  reason 
until  he,  too,  caught  sight  of  a  ghostly  hand 
hovering  in  the  vicinity  of  his  pocket.  Soon 
the  room  was  filled  with  a  veritable  chaos  of 
flying  objects.  Railroads,  steamship  lines,  na 
tional  banks,  trust  companies,  insurance  com 
panies,  went  hurtling  through  the  air,  but  all 
the  time  our  financier  sat  motionless  in  his 
chair.  It  was  suggested  that  the  force  which 
set  such  ponderous  objects  into  motion  was 
136 


PALLADINO   OUTDONE 

the   mysterious    element  known    as   "  executive 
ability." 

In  the  final  experiment  the  subject  was  a 
popular  novelist,  who  gave  a  most  interesting 
exhibition  of  how  a  nation-wide  reputation  can 
be  raised  and  supported  without  the  slightest 
apparent  reason.  A  painstaking  examination 
by  the  Committee  showed  that  he  had  concealed 
about  him  neither  talent,  nor  imagination,  nor 
knowledge  of  human  nature,  nor  insight  into 
life,  nor  an  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  ele 
ments  of  English  grammar.  Nevertheless,  be 
fore  the  eyes  of  the  amazed  observers,  novel 
after  novel  went  humming  through  the  air  in  a 
direction  away  from  the  writer,  while  a  steady 
stream  of  bank-books,  automobiles,  and  country 
houses  flowed  in  the  opposite  direction. 


137 


XV 

THE  CADENCE  OF  THE  CROWD 

I  HAVE  always  been  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the 
music  of  marching  feet.  I  know  of  no  sound 
in  nature  or  in  Wagner  that  stirs  the  heart  like 
the  footsteps  of  the  crowd  on  the  board  plat 
form  of  the  Third  Avenue  "  L  "  at  City  Hall 
every  late  afternoon.  The  human  tread  is  al 
ways  eloquent  in  chorus,  but  it  is  at  its  best 
upon  a  wooden  flooring.  Stone  and  asphalt  will 
often  degrade  the  march  of  a  crowd  to  a  shuffle. 
It  needs  the  living  wood  to  give  full  dignity  to 
the  spirit  of  human  resolution  that  speaks  in  a 
thousand  pair  of  feet  simultaneously  moving  in 
the  same  direction;  and  particularly  when  the 
moving  mass  is  not  an  army,  but  a  crowd  ad 
vancing  without  rank  or  order.  I  am  exceed 
ingly  fond  of  military  parades;  so  fond  that  I 
138 


CADENCE    OF   THE    CROWD 

repeatedly  find  myself  standing  in  front  of  la 
dies  of  medium  height  who  pathetically  inquire 
at  frequent  intervals  what  regiment  is  passing  at 
that  moment.  But  it  is  not  the  blare  of  the 
brass  bands  I  care  for,  or  the  clatter  of  cav 
alry,  which  I  find  exceedingly  stupid,  or  even 
the  rattle  of  the  heavy  guns,  but  the  men  on 
foot.  Only  when  the  infantry  comes  swinging 
by  do  I  grow  wild  with  the  desire  to  wear  a  con 
spicuous  uniform  and  die  for  my  country. 
Saint-Gaudens's  man  on  horseback  in  the  Shaw 
memorial  is  beautiful,  but  it  is  the  forward- 
lunging  line  of  negro  faces  and  the  line  of 
muskets  on  shoulder  that  threaten  to  bring  the 
tears  to  my  eyes. 

This,  I  suppose,  is  rank  sentimentality ;  but  I 
cannot  help  it.  Any  procession,  no  matter  how 
humble,  puts  me  into  a  state  of  mingled  exalta 
tion  and  tearfulness.  It  is  in  part  the  sound  of 
human  footsteps  and  in  part  the  solemn  idea 
139 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

behind  them.  I  am  not  thinking  of  stately  pro 
cessions  moving  up  the  aisles  of  churches  to  the 
sound  of  music.  I  have  in  mind,  rather,  a  band 
of,  say,  a  thousand  working  girls  on  Labour 
Day,  or  of  an  Italian  fraternal  organisation 
heavy  with  plumes  and  banners,  or  even  a  Tam 
many  political  club  on  its  annual  outing; 
wherever  the  idea  of  human  dependence  and 
human  brotherhood  is  testified  to  in  the  mere  act 
of  moving  along  the  pavement  shoulder  to  shoul 
der.  Above  all  things,  it  is  a  line  of  marching 
children  that  takes  me  quite  out  of  myself.  I 
was  a  visitor  not  long  ago  at  one  of  the  public 
schools,  and  I  sat  in  state  on  the  principal's 
platform.  When  the  bell  rang  for  dismissal, 
and  the  sliding  doors  were  pushed  apart  so  as 
to  form  one  huge  assembly  room,  and  the  chil 
dren  began  to  file  out  to  the  sound  of  the  piano, 
the  splendour  and  the  pathos  of  it  overpowered 
me.  I  did  not  know  which  I  wanted  to  be  then, 
140 


CADENCE   OF   THE   CROWD 

the  principal  in  his  magnificent  chair  of  office, 
or  one  of  those  two  thousand  children  keeping 
step  in  their  march  towards  freedom. 

Pathos?  Why  pathos  in  a  little  army  of 
children  marching  out  in  fire  drill,  or  the  same 
children  marching  in  for  their  morning's  Bible 
reading  and  singing?  I  find  it  difficult  to  say 
why.  Perhaps  it  is  consciousness  of  that  law 
which  has  raised  man  from  the  brute,  and  which 
I  see  embodied  when  we  take  a  thousand  chil 
dren  and  range  them  in  order  and  induce  them 
to  keep  step.  Perhaps  the  pathos  is  in  the 
recognition  of  our  isolated  weakness  and  our 
need  to  make  painful  progress  by  getting  close 
together  and  moving  forward  in  close  formation. 
In  any  case,  the  pathos  is  there.  Consider  a 
children's  May  party,  on  its  way  to  Central 
Park.  A  fife-and-drum  corps  of  three  little 
boys  in  uniform  leads  the  way.  The  Queen  of 
the  May,  all  in  white,  walks  with  her  consort 
141 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

under  a  canopy  of  ribbons  and  flowers,  a  little 
stiffly,  perhaps,  and  self-consciously,  but  not 
more  so  than  older  queens  and  kings  on  parade. 
A  long  line  of  boys  and  girls  in  many-coloured 
caps  moves  between  flying  detachments  of 
mothers  carrying  baskets.  The  confectioner's 
wagon,  laden  with  its  precious  commissariat  of 
ice  cream  and  cake,  moves  leisurely  behind;  for 
the  confectioner's  horse  this  is  evidently  a  holi 
day.  Is  pathos  conceivable  in  so  delightful,  so 
smiling,  an  event?  Alas,  I  have  watched  May 
parties  go  by,  and  the  serious  little  faces  under 
the  red  and  white  caps  have  given  me  a  heavier 
case  of  Weltschmerz  than  I  have  ever  experi 
enced  at  a  performance  of  "  Tristan  und 
Isolde."  It  was  the  fact  of  those  little  children 
advancing  in  unison ;  that  is  the  word.  If  they 
had  trudged  or  scurried  along,  pell-mell,  I 
should  not  have  minded.  But  May  parties  move 
forward  in  procession,  and  the  movement  of  a 


CADENCE    OF   THE    CROWD 

compact  crowd  is,  to  me,  always  heavy  with 
pathos. 

But  no  crowd  is  like  the  afternoon  crowd 
upon  the  wooden  platform  of  the  "  L  "  station 
at  City  Hall.  I  don't  mean  to  be  sentimental 
when  I  say  that  the  sound  is  to  me  like  the 
march  of  human  civilisation  and  human  history. 
Outwardly  there  is  little  to  justify  my  grandiose 
comparison.  You  see  only  a  heaving  mass  of 
men  and  women  who  are  not  very  well  clad.  The 
men  are  unshaven,  the  women  awry  with  a  day's 
labour.  They  move  on  with  that  beautiful  op 
timism  of  an  American  crowd  which  has  been 
trained  in  the  belief  that  there  is  always  plenty 
of  room  ahead.  There  is  very  little  pushing. 
Occasionally  a  band  of  young  boys  hustle  their 
way  through  the  crowd ;  but  a  New  York  crowd 
seems  always  to  be  mindful  of  the  days  when  we 
were  all  of  us  boys.  It  is  a  reading  public. 
The  men  carry  newspapers  whose  flaring  head- 
143 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

lines  of  red  and  green  give  a  touch  of  almost 
Italian  colour.  The  women  carry  cloth-bound 
novels  in  paper  wrappers.  But  it  is  not  an  as 
semblage  of  poets  or  scholars  or  thinkers,  or 
whatever  class  it  is  that  is  supposed  to  keep  the 
world  moving.  It  is  that  most  solemn  of  all 
things — a  city  crowd  on  its  way  home  from 
the  day's  work. 

The  footsteps  keep  up  the  tramp,  tramp,  on 
the  board  flooring,  while  train  after  train  pulls 
out  jammed  within  and  without.  The  influx 
from  the  street  allows  no  vacuum  to  be  formed 
upon  the  platform.  The  patience  of  the  mod 
ern  man  shows  wonderfully.  The  tired  workers 
face  the  hour's  ride  that  lies  between  them  and 
home  with  beautiful  self-restraint  and  courage. 
And  in  their  weariness  and  their  patience  lies 
the  full  solemnity  of  the  scene.  The  morning 
crowd,  even  on  the  same  wooden  platform  at 
City  Hall,  is  different.  The  morning  crowd  is 
144 


CADENCE   OF   THE    CROWD 

not  so  firmly  knit  together.  You  catch  in 
dividual  and  local  peculiarities.  You  feel  that 
there  are  men  and  women  here  from  Harlem, 
and  others  from  Long  Island,  and  others  from 
Westchester  and  the  Bronx.  They  are  still 
fresh  from  their  separate  homes,  with  their  sep 
arate  atmospheres  about  them.  Some  are  brisk 
from  the  morning's  exercise  and  the  cold  bath; 
some  are  still  a  bit  sleepy  from  last  night's 
pleasures ;  some  go  to  the  day's  task  with  eager 
anticipation;  some  move  forward  indifferent 
and  resigned.  But  when  these  same  men  and 
women  surge  homeward  in  the  evening,  they  are 
one  in  spirit;  they  are  all  equally  tired.  The 
city  and  the  day's  task  have  seized  upon  them 
and  passed  them  through  the  same  set  of  rollers 
and  pressed  out  their  differences  and  trans 
formed  them  into  a  single  mass  of  weary  human 
material.  The  city  has  had  its  day's  work  out 
of  them  and  now  sends  them  home  to  recruit  the 
145 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

new  supply  of  energy  that  it  will  demand  to 
morrow.  The  unshaven  men  with  their  news 
papers  and  the  listless  women  with  their  paper- 
covered  novels  show  ascetically  tight-drawn 
faces,  as  if  the  day  had  been  passed  in  prayer 
and  supplication.  I  need  not  see  those  faces ; 
I  know  they  are  there  from  the  steady  footfalls 
on  the  board  platform.  I  overhear  a  young 
girl  recounting  what  a  perfectly  lovely  time  she 
had  last  night,  and  how  she  simply  couldn't 
stop  dancing;  but  her  foot  drags  a  bit  heavily 
and  there  sounds  in  her  chatter  and  her 
vehemence  the  ground-tone  of  weariness. 

It  is  not  often  that  I  hear  the  tramp  of  the 
late  afternoon  crowd  upon  the  wooden  plat 
forms  at  City  Hall.  I  find  the  sound  of  the 
crowd  too  solemn  to  be  endured  every  day,  and 
there  is  no  comfort  in  the  crush.  I  usually 
take  pains  to  travel  at  an  early  hour  when  there 
are  few  people,  and  one  is  sure  of  a  seat. 
146 


XVI 

WHAT  WE  FORGET 

THE  importance  of  knowing  who  my  Congress 
man  is  had  never  occurred  to  me  until  Pro 
fessor  Wilson  Stubbs  brought  up  the  subject  at 
a  luncheon  in  the  Reform  Club.  Professor 
Stubbs  spoke  on  Civic  Obligations.  He  argued 
that  at  the  bottom  of  all  political  corruption 
lay  the  average  citizen's  personal  indifference. 
"  For  instance,"  he  said,  "  how  many  of  those 
present  know  the  name  of  the  man  who  repre 
sents  their  district  at  Washington?  "  And  as 
it  happened,  while  he  waited  for  a  reply,  his  eye 
rested  thoughtfully  on  me. 

I  grew  red  under  his  scrutiny.     I  tried  my 
best  to  remember  and  failed.     I  did  vaguely  re 
call  the  lithographed  presentment  of  a  large, 
147 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

clean-shaven  man,  with  a  heavy  jaw.  It  hung 
in  a  barber-shop  window  between  a  blue-and- 
red  poster  announcing  a  grand  masquerade  and 
civic  ball,  and  a  papier-mache  trout  under  a 
glass  case.  I  could  not  bring  back  the  man's 
name,  although  I  was  sure  that  his  picture  was 
inscribed  on  the  top  "  Our  Choice,"  and  at  the 
bottom  he  was  characterised  as  somebody's 
friend — I  could  not  recall  whether  he  was  the 
People's  friend,  or  the  Workingman's,  or  the 
Bronx's.  I  could  not  even  make  out  his  fea 
tures,  although,  oddly  enough,  I  could  see  the 
trout  very  distinctly.  The  fish,  I  recollected, 
had  a  peculiarly  ferocious  scowl,  as  if  it  re 
sented  the  absurd  blotches  of  green  and  gold 
with  which  the  artist  had  attempted  to  imitate 
Nature's  colour  scheme.  Gradually  I  found  my 
self  thinking  of  the  trout  as  a  member  of  Con 
gress.  Had  I  continued  much  longer,  I  should 
have  visualised  that  fish  in  the  act  of  address- 
148 


WHAT   WE   FORGET 

ing  the  Speaker  of  the  House  on  the  tariff 
bill. 

Yet  I  could  not  help  taking  the  professor's 
implied  criticism  to  heart.  It  would  have  been 
something  even,  to  be  able  to  tell  whether  I  lived 
in  the  Eleventh  Congressional  District  or  the 
Fifteenth;  but  I  didn't  know.  For  how  long  a 
term  was  the  man  elected?  I  didn't  know.  Was 
it  required  that  he  should  be  able  to  read  and 
write?  I  didn't  know. 

That  was  the  beginning.  When  luncheon  was 
over,  I  sat  before  the  fire  and  tried  to  find  out 
how  much  I  did  know  of  the  things  I  should.  I 
found  myself  staring  into  bottomless  depths  of 
ignorance.  I  tried  to  draw  up  a  list  of  State 
Governors.  I  knew  there  must  be  between  forty 
and  fifty,  but  I  could  remember  only  three  Gov 
ernors,  including  our  own;  and  later  I  recalled 
that  one  of  the  three  was  dead. 

From  death  my  mind  leaped,  oddly  enough, 
149 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

to  drownings.  How  should  one  go  about  re 
suscitating  a  man  who  has  been  pulled  out  of 
the  river?  He  must  be  rolled  on  a  barrel,  of 
course;  that  much  I  remembered.  But  was  it 
face  down  or  face  upward?  And  should  his 
arms  be  pumped  vertically  up  and  down,  or 
horizontally  away  from  the  body  and  back? 
Yes,  and  how  if  some  intelligent  foreigner  were 
to  ask  me  what  our  five  principal  cities  were, 
in  the  order  of  population?  It  would  be 
easy  enough  to  begin,  New  York,  Chicago, 
Philadelphia — and  then?  Was  it  Boston, 
or  Baltimore,  or  San  Francisco?  I  did 
not  know. 

There  was  no  stopping  now.  I  was  fast  in 
my  own  clutches.  I  bit  at  my  cigar,  and  tried 
to  call  the  roll  of  the  seven  wise  men  of  Greece. 
I  stopped  at  the  first,  Solon.  He,  I  remem 
bered,  rescued  the  Athenians  from  misgovern- 
ment  and  slavery,  and  left  the  city  before  they 
150 


WHAT   WE   FORGET 

could  experience  a  change  of  heart  and  hang 
him. 

Who  were  the  nine  muses?  Well,  there  was 
Terpsichore — her  disciples  are  spoken  of  every 
day  in  the  newspapers.  And  then  there  was  the 
muse  of  History,  whose  name  possibly  was 
Thalia,  and  the  muse  of  Poetry,  whose  name  I 
could  not  recall.  I  fared  much  better  with  the 
apostles:  Peter  and  Paul,  of  course,  and  John 
and  James,  and  Judas  and  Matthew,  and  Mark 
and  Luke ;  eight  out  of  twelve. 

But  of  the  seven  wonders  of  the  world  I  could 
cite  with  certainty  only  one,  the  Colossus  of 
Rhodes.  I  was  doubtful  about  Mount  Vesuvius. 
I  remembered  not  a  single  one  of  the  seven 
deadly  sins,  and,  at  first,  could  place  only  two 
of  the  ten  commandments — the  ones  on  filial 
obedience  and  on  the  Sabbath.  Later  I  thought 
of  the  newest  realistic  hit  at  the  Park  Theatre ; 
that  brought  back  one  more  commandment.  On 
151 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  other  hand,  it  was  a  relief  to  call  the  three 
Graces  straight  off — Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity. 
I  grew  humble.  I  began  to  doubt  if,  after 
all,  it  is  true  that  a  modern  schoolboy  knows 
more  than  Aristotle  did.  In  any  case,  whether 
Harrington's  boy  who  is  still  in  the  grammar 
grades  knows  more  than  Aristotle,  he  certainly 
knows  more  than  his  father.  They  have  a  new- 
fashioned  branch  of  study  in  the  modern 
schools,  which  they  call  training  the  powers  of 
observation.  And  that  boy  comes  home  with 
mischief  in  his  soul,  and  asks  Harrington  which 
way  do  the  seeds  in  an  apple  point.  Harring 
ton  stares  at  the  boy,  and  the  boy  smiles  quiz 
zically  at  Harrington,  and  the  father  grows 
suspicious.  Are  there  seeds  in  an  apple?  There 
are  seedless  oranges,  of  course,  which  presup 
poses  oranges  not  destitute  of  seeds;  but  an 
apple?  Harrington  tries  to  call  up  the  image 
of  the  last  apple  he  has  eaten  and  he  thinks 


WHAT   WE   FORGET 

of  sweet  and  sour  apples,  apples  of  a  waxen 
yellow  and  apples  of  a  purple  red,  but  he  can 
not  visualise  the  seeds. 

As  Harrington  sits  there  dumb,  Jack  asks  him 
which  shoe  does  he  put  on  first  when  he  dresses 
in  the  morning.  Jack  knows,  the  rascal.  He 
can  trace  every  process  through  which  the  cot 
ton  fibre  passes  from  the  plant  to  the  finished 
cloth.  He  knows  why  factory  chimneys  are 
built  high.  He  knows  how  a  boat  tacks  against 
the  wind.  And  he  knows  that  his  father  knows 
nothing  of  these  things. 

But  I  would  rather  have  Harrington's  boy 
quiz  me  on  things  that  I  can  pretend  are  not 
worth  knowing,  like  the  seeds  in  an  apple,  than 
on  things  that  cannot  be  waved  aside.  I  tried 
to  explain  one  day  how  the  revolution  of  the 
earth  about  the  sun  produces  the  seasons,  and  I 
succeeded  only  in  proving  that  when  it  is  winter 
in  New  York  it  is  daylight  in  Buenos  Ayres. 
153 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Thereupon,  Jack  asked  me  what  an  unearned 
increment  was.      When   I  finished  he   said   his 
teacher  had  told  them  that  views  like  those  I 
had   just   expressed   were   common    among   ill- 
informed  people.     The  following  day  he  came 
in  and  said  to  Harrington,  "  Papa,  name  six 
female  characters  in  Dickens,  in  three  minutes." 
Well,  Harrington  did,  but  it  was  a  strain,  and 
in  order  to  make  up  the  total  he  had  to  count 
in  the  anonymous,  elderly,  single  woman  whom 
Mr.  Pickwick  surprised  in  her  bedroom.     Jack 
insisted  tha't,  as  she  was  nameless,  it  was  not 
fair  to  call  her  a  character,  but  Harrington  put 
his  foot  down  and  refused  to  argue  the  matter. 
And  as  I  sit  there  before  the  fire,  smiling 
over  Harrington  and  Jack  and  myself,  my  cigar 
goes  out,  and  I  signal  Thomas  to  bring  me  an 
other.     Thomas  has  the  ascetic  countenance  of 
a  tragedian,  and  the  repose  of  an  archbishop. 
Now,   Thomas — and   it   comes   to   me   with  a 
154 


WHAT   WE   FORGET 

shock — what  do  I  know  about  Thomas,  the  man, 
as  distinguished  from  the  hired  servant  whom  I 
have  been  aware  of  this  year  and  more?  Is  he 
married  or  single?  And  if  he  is  married,  do 
his  children  resent  their  father's  wearing  liv 
ery?  Does  Thomas  himself  like  to  be  a  serv 
ant?  Are  there  ideals  and  speculations  behind 
that  close-shaven  mask?  Has  he  any  views  on 
the  future  life?  Has  he  ever  thought  on  the 
subject  of  vivisection?  Does  he  vote  the  Re 
publican  ticket?  Does  he  earn  a  decent  wage? 
I  could  only  answer,  with  an  aching  sense  of 
isolation,  with  the  wistful  longing  of  one  who 
looks  into  unfathomable  depths,  that  I  didn't 
know.  Oh,  Thomas,  fellow  man,  brother!  We 
have  rubbed  elbows  for  months  and  I  do  not 
know  whether  you  are  a  man  or  only  a  lackey; 
whether  you  drink  all  night,  or  pray;  whether 
you  love  me  or  hate  me.  How  can  you  hold 
the  cigar  box  so  impassively,  so  single-mindedly  ? 
155 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

I  said  to  myself  that  I  would  make  amends  to 
Thomas,  that  it  was  never  too  late.  And, 
quietly,  genially,  I  asked  him,  "How  do  you 
like  your  place  here,  Thomas  ?  "  Thomas  grew 
uneasy,  and  smiled  in  a  sickish  fashion,  and  en 
treated  me  with  his  eyes  to  pick  my  cigar  and 
let  him  go.  But  I  was  in  the  full  swing  of 
new-found  righteousness.  "  There's  nothing 
wrong,  is  there,  Thomas?  "  And  he  replied,  "  I 
beg  pardon,  sir ;  but  Henry's  my  name.  Thomas 
was  my  predecessor.  He  left,  you  will  remem 
ber,  sir,  a  year  ago  last  May."  "  But  every 
body  calls  you  Thomas."  "  The  gentlemen  were 
used  to  the  other  name,  sir." 

Might  Professor  Wilson  Stubbs  be  wrong, 
after  all,  I  thought.  Perhaps  no  one  is  really 
expected  to  know  what  everybody  ought  to 
know.  I  don't  know  the  name  of  my  Congress 
man.  But  neither  do  I  know  the  name  of  my 
butcher  and  my  grocer;  and  my  butcher  and 
156 


WHAT   WE   FORGET 

my  grocer  can  slay  me  with  typhoid  or  pto 
maines,  whereas  the  utmost  my  Congressman  can 
do  is  to  misrepresent  me.  I  don't  know  the  man 
who  makes  my  cigars;  he  may  be  consumptive. 
I  don't  know  the  critic  who  supplies  me  with  lit 
erary  opinions,  and  the  scholar  who  gives  me 
my  outlook  upon  life.  I  don't  know  the  man 
who  lives  next  door.  From  the  decent  silence 
that  reigns  in  his  apartment,  I  gather  that  he 
does  not  beat  his  wife;  but  that  is  all.  Yet  he 
and  I  are  supposed  to  be  bound  up  in  a  com 
munity  of  interests.  We  both  belong  to  the 
class  whose  income  ranges  from  $2,000  to 
$4,000  a  year,  of  which  we  spend  38  per  cent, 
on  food ;  and  we  raise  an  average  of  2  2-3  chil 
dren  to  the  family,  and  are  both  responsible  for 
the  wide  prevalence  of  musical  comedy  on  the 
American  stage.  But  I  have  seen  my  neighbour 
twice  in  the  last  three  years. 

So  that  was  the  end  of  it.     And  because  it 
157 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

was  late  in  the  afternoon,  I  thought  I  would 
telephone  to  the  office  that  I  was  not  coming 
back.  But  for  the  life  of  me,  I  could  not  think 
of  my  telephone  number;  and  Henry  looked 
me  up  in  the  directory. 


158 


XVII 
THE  CHILDREN  THAT  LEAD  US 

THE  mayor  sat  before  his  library  fire  and  shiv 
ered,  and  kept  wondering  why  there  was  no 
clause  in  the  city  charter  prescribing  a  mini 
mum  of  common  sense  for  presidents  of  the 
Board  of  Education.  A  man  thus  qualified 
would  know  more  than  to  suggest  an  increase 
of  three  million  dollars  for  school  sittings.  The 
city's  comptroller  was  crying  bankruptcy ;  the 
newspapers  were  asserting  that  the  mayor's 
nephew  was  head  of  a  favoured  contracting 
firm  not  entirely  for  his  health;  and  the  Board 
of  Education  wanted  three  million  dollars.  The 
mayor  had  a  touch  of  fever.  The  steep  rows  of 
figures  in  the  Education  Board's  memorandum 
curled  up  into  little  arabesques  under  his  eyes, 
159 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

which  were  closing  with  fatigue.  Only  he  did 
not  wish  to  sleep.  In  the  perfect  stillness  he 
could  hear  his  own  rapid  heartbeat.  The  clat 
ter  of  sleety  rain  against  the  windows  made 
him  restless. 

If  only  O'Brien  were  here,  O'Brien,  who  was  a 
good  chief  of  police,  and  a  matchless  personal 
aide-de-camp.  They  would  then  put  on  boots 
and  oilskins  and  go  out  into  the  night  on  one 
of  their  frequent  Harun-Al-Rashid  expeditions. 
The  mayor's  wife?  Yes,  it  is  true  that  before 
leaving  for  the  theatre  she  had  cautioned  him 
not  to  stir  from  the  house.  But  she  could  not 
possibly  have  known  how  great  was  his  need 
of  a  breath  of  air.  But  O'Brien  was  not  here. 
Was  it  because  he  had  just  been  appointed 
president  of  the  Board  of  Education  and  comp 
troller  in  one  and  was  a  busy  man?  Perhaps. 
And  yet  a  person  might  step  to  the  telephone 
and  ring  up  O'Brien  if  it  were  not  that  one's  legs 
160 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD   US 

were  weighted  down  with  the  weight  of  centuries 
and  of  dozens  of  new  school  buildings  all  in 
reinforced  concrete.  Was  it  concrete?  The 
mayor  was  not  quite  sure,  and  he  turned  to  ask 
O'Brien,  who  stood  there  at  one  side  of  the  fire 
place,  erect  and  attentive. 

"  Do  we  go  out  to-night?  "  said  the  mayor. 

"  I  should  not  advise  it,  your  Honour,"  an 
swered  O'Brien.  "You  are  not  well  enough. 
If  it  is  adventure  you  would  go  in  search  of, 
I  have  here  quite  an  extraordinary  delegation 
of  citizens  who  desire  an  interview  with  your 
Honour." 

"Let  us  hear  them,  by  all  means,"  replied 
the  mayor. 

O'Brien  drew  aside  the  curtain  which  divided 
the  library  from  the  general  reception  room  and 
there  marched  in,  two  abreast  and  maintain 
ing  precise  step,  a  solemn  line  of  children, 
who  saluted  the  mayor  gravely  and  ranged 
161 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

themselves  in  a  semicircle  across  the  room.  As 
the  mayor  veered  in  his  chair  to  face  his  vis 
itors,  a  girl  of  some  fifteen  years  stepped  out 
of  the  line.  She  was  still  in  her  schoolgirl's 
dresses,  but  tall,  with  features  of  a  fine,  pensive 
cut  and  earnest  eyes  that  were  already  peering 
from  out  the  child's  life  into  the  opening  doors 
of  womanhood. 

"  May  it  please  your  Honour,"  she  began, 
"  we  are  a  committee  from  the  Central  Bureau 
of  Federated  Children's  Organisations  and  we 
have  come  here  to  protest  against  certain  intol 
erable  conditions  of  which  our  members  are  the 
victims." 

Had  they  come  in  behalf  of  those  additional 
three  million  dollars,  the  mayor  wondered  un 
easily.  "  State  the  nature  of  your  grievance," 
he  said. 

The  leader  of  the  delegation  came  a  step 
nearer.  "  Your  Honour,  I  can  only  attempt 
162 


CHILDREN   THAT  LEAD   US 

the  merest  outline  of  our  general  position.  Sev 
eral  of  my  associates  will  take  turns  in  acquaint 
ing  you  with  the  details  of  our  case.  Our  com 
plaint  is  that  we,  the  children  of  this  country, 
are  being  overworked.  Formerly  it  was  sup 
posed  to  be  the  inalienable  right  of  children  to 
remain  free  from  the  cares  of  life.  That  theory 
has  long  been  abandoned.  The  task  of  solving 
the  gravest  problems  of  existence  has  been 
thrust  upon  us,  and  every  day  that  passes 
leaves  us  saddled  with  new  responsibilities.  But 
the  limit  of  endurance  has  been  reached  at 
last.  We  feel  that  unless  we  protest  now  the 
whole  structure  of  society — its  economics,  poli 
tics,  art,  and  religion — will  be  shifted  from  the 
shoulders  of  the  world's  men  and  women  to  the 
shoulders  of  us  children.  I  hope  your  Honour 
is  willing  to  hear  us." 

"Of  course,  my  dear,"  the  mayor  answered 
softly.     He  said,  "  My  dear,"  and  he  said  it 
163 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

tenderly  because  he  had  recognised  in  the 
speaker  his  own  daughter  Helen,  whom  he  had 
supposed  with  her  mother  at  the  theatre. 

"  Step  forward,  Flora  Binns,"  said  Helen, 
and  Flora  Binns,  who  was  only  eight,  blue-eyed, 
and  with  ringlets  of  gold,  approached  and 
curtsied  prettily.  "  May  it  please  your  Hon 
our,"  she  said,  "  I  am  the  delegate  from  Local 
No.  16  Children  of  Weak  and  Tempted  Stage 
Mothers'  Union.  We  wish  to  place  on  record  our 
opposition  to  the  modern  society  drama,  which 
so  frequently  throws  the  duty  of  supporting 
the  climax  of  a  play  upon  children  under  the 
age  of  ten.  Although  the  playwrights  are  fond 
of  showing  that  our  papa  is  a  brute  and  that 
our  mamma  is  an  angel,  they  invariably  shrink 
from  the  logical  conclusion  that  our  mamma  is 
right  in  planning  to  run  away  with  the  man  who 
has  offered  her  years  of  silent  devotion.  So 
the  playwrights  make  one  or  two  of  us  appear 
164 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD   US 

on  the  stage  just  in  time  to  arouse  in  our 
mamma  a  sense  of  duty  to  her  children  and  to 
prevent  the  elopement.  Now  we  submit  that 
the  office  of  justifying  our  entire  modern  mar 
riage  fabric  is  too  burdensome  for  us.  Don't 
you  think  so,  Mr.  Mayor?  " 

"  Why,  yes,"  replied  the  mayor,  thoughtfully. 

"  And  they  make  use  of  us  in  other  ways, 
sir.  In  fact,  whenever  the  grown  up  persons 
in  a  play  are  in  difficulties  and  the  audience  is 
beginning  to  yawn,  the  author  sends  us  to  the 
rescue.  Why,  only  the  other  day  we  children 
saved  a  Wild  West  melodrama  from  utter  fail 
ure.  It  took  three  of  us  to  do  it,  but  we  suc 
ceeded."  Flora  curtsied,  started  back  and  re 
turned.  "  And  when  I  utter  these  sentiments, 
sir,  I  speak  also  for  the  Union  of  Precocious 
Magazine  Children,  which  is  represented  here 
by  Mary  Sparks."  Mary  Sparks,  a  dark- 
haired  miss  with  dancing  eyes,  bowed  saucily. 
165 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  Step  out,  Fritz  Hackenschneider,"  said 
Helen,  and  flaxen-haired  Fritz,  radiantly  holi 
day-like  in  his  lustrously  washed  face  and  large, 
blue  polka-dot  tie,  approached  the  mayor's 
chair. 

"  I  don't  have  much  to  say,  sir,"  he  recited 
in  a  nervous,  jerky  voice.  "  I  have  been  sent 
by  the  Fraternal  Association  of  Comic  Supple 
ment  Children.  We  wish  to  raise  our  voice 
against  the  almost  universal  conception  that 
people  can  be  made  to  laugh  only  when  one 
of  us  hides  a  pin  on  the  seat  of  grandpa's 
chair.  The  burden  of  an  entire  nation's 
humour  is  more  than  we  can  sustain.  Thank 
you,  sir,"  and  he  retired  into  the  background, 
giving,  as  he  passed,  just  one  tug  at  Mary 
Sparks's  hair  and  eliciting  a  suppressed  scream. 

"  Mamie  O'Farrell,"  called  out  Helen.  The 
mayor  found  it  impossible  to  decide  whether 
Mamie  was  thirteen  or  twenty-five.  She  was 
166 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD   US 

very  short  and  flat-chested,  and  the  colour  of 
her  face  in  the  firelight  was  like  a  dull  card 
board.  She  wore  a  long,  faded  automobile 
cloak  and  an  enormous  black  hat  with  a  trailing 
green  feather.  On  a  gilt  chain  about  her  neck 
hung  a  locket  in  the  form  of  a  heart  half  as 
large  as  the  one  that  beat  uneasily  within  her. 
Mamie  came  forward  reluctantly  and  saluted. 
Then  she  began  to  squirm  from  side  to  side  and 
to  shift  from  foot  to  foot,  giggling  in  un 
fathomable  embarrassment. 

"  Well,"  said  Helen,  in  a  voice  that  was  not 
at  all  unkind. 

Mamie's  giggle  grew  worse.  She  seemed  bent 
on  snapping  the  massive  gilt  chain  with  twisting 
it  back  and  forth,  and  finally  gave  up  the  whole 
case.  "You  tell  it,  Helen,"  she  begged.  "I 
forgot  wot  I  was  goin'  t'  say.  I'm  scared 
poifectly  stiff." 

Helen  complied.  "  May  it  please  your 
167 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Honour,  Mamie  O'Farrell  wants  me  to  say  that 
she  represents  the  Amalgamated  Union  of  Cash 
Girls  and  Juvenile  Cotton  Mill  and  Glass  Fac 
tory  Operatives.  Mamie  is  fifteen.  She  works 
eleven  hours  a  day  and  receives  three  and  a  half 
dollars  a  week.  She  passes  two  hours  every 
day  clinging  to  a  strap  in  a  crowded  surface 
car.  She  carries  her  lunch  in  a  paper  bundle 
together  with  a  copy  of  Laura  M.  Clay's  novel 
entitled  '  Irma's  Ducal  Lover.'  Saturday 
nights,  if  her  father  has  been  strong  enough  to 
pass  Murphy's  saloon  without  opening  his  pay 
envelope,  she  goes  to  the  theatre  where  the  play 
is  'The  Queen  of  the  Opium  Fiends.'  Some 
times  she  attends  a  dance  of  the  Friendship 
Circle,  but  as  a  rule  she  spends  her  nights  at 
home  reading  the  Evening  Yell,  which  tells  her 
that  beauty  is  often  a  fatal  gift  and  that 
there  is  danger  in  the  first  glass  of  champagne 
a  young  girl  drinks.  Am  I  telling  your 
168 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD   US 

story  in  the  right  way,  Mamie  ? "  asked 
Helen. 

"  Goodness,  yes.  You're  awful  kind,  Helen," 
said  Mamie. 

"  Thus  far,  Mamie  has  nothing  to  complain 
of,"  continued  Helen.  "  But  she  has  read 
somewhere  that  the  slaughter  of  the  poor 
negroes  in  the  Congo  and  of  the  Chinese  in 
Manchuria,  and  of  the  Zulus  in  Natal,  and  of 
the  Moros  in  the  Philippines,  arises  from  the 
necessity  under  which  the  civilised  nations  la 
bour  to  find  foreign  markets  for  their  increasing 
output  of  cotton  goods,  brass  jewelry,  and 
coloured  beads.  Now  the  members  of  Mamie's 
union  are  engaged  in  producing  precisely  those 
commodities,  and  they  have  come  to  feel  in  con 
sequence,  that  they  are  directly  responsible  for 
the  innocent  blood  that  is  being  shed  in  various 
parts  of  the  world.  It  cannot  be  their  em 
ployers  who  are  at  fault,  because  the  press  and 
169 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  clergy  are  unanimous  in  declaring  that  the 
heads  of  our  great  industries  are  the  benefactors 
of  humankind.  That  is  why  the  girls  protest. 
They  are  quite  content  with  their  own  fate,  but 
they  cannot  bear  the  entire  responsibility  for 
the  march  of  civilisation.  Mamie  tells  me  that 
she  cannot  sleep  of  nights  for  thinking  of  the 
poor  little  Moorish  babies  whose  mothers  were 
killed  by  the  French  guns.  That  is  the  posi 
tion  taken  by  your  union,  isn't  it,  Mamie?  " 

Mamie  giggled,  went  through  a  final  contor 
tion  of  ill-ease  and  returned  to  her  place,  in  the 
half-circle.  She  was  succeeded  by  a  brown- 
haired  little  maiden,  who  for  some  minutes  had 
been  showing  a  strained  anxiety  to  break  into 
speech. 

"  Please,  Helen,"  she  entreated,  "  may  I  say 
something?  " 

"  Of  course,  dear,"  said  Helen. 

The  little  maid  bowed  to  the  mayor.  "  Please, 
170 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD   US 

sir,"  she  said,  "  my  papa  was  thirty-eight  years 
of  age  when  he  married  mamma.  He  was  an  old 
bachelor.  He  was  not  anxious  to  be  married, 
but  they  put  a  tax  on  him  because  they  were 
afraid  of  depopulation.  And  he  loves  me  very 
dearly.  But  sometimes  when  he  thinks  of  his 
old  freedom  he  looks  so  sadly  at  me.  I  feel  very 
sorry  for  him  then.  I  don't  want  him  to  be 

unhappy  on  my  account " 

She  withdrew  and  Helen  stepped  forward 
to  sum  up  the  case.  "  You  must  not  think, 
your  Honour,  that  it  is  our  desire  to  embarrass 
your  administration.  Bad  as  conditions  are, 
we  would  have  continued  to  suffer  in  silence, 
because,  you  see,  there  are  still  little  flashes  of 
freedom  left  to  us  children.  But  we  have 
learned  that  there  is  now  on  foot  in  England 
a  movement  which  threatens  to  reduce  us  to  un 
mitigated  slavery.  We  understand  that  Mr. 
Sidney  Webb,  Mr.  Francis  Galton,  Professor 
171 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Karl  Pearson,  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  are  ad 
vocating  a  scheme  of  state  endowment  for 
motherhood.  Now  you  can  see  for  yourself 
what  that  would  mean.  In  politics  it  would 
mean  the  establishment  of  a  motherhood  suf 
frage  with  plural  voting  based  on  the  size  of 
the  family.  In  the  economic  sphere  it  would 
mean  that  we  shall  be  supporting  our  papas 
and  mammas.  In  art,  which  must  reflect  the 
actualities  of  life,  it  would  mean  almost  the 
elimination  of  the  element  of  love,  since  the 
world  is  to  be  a  children's  world.  In  other 
words,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  entire  social 
fabric  will  come  to  press  on  our  shoulders  alone. 
It  is  against  the  mere  possibility  of  such  an 
unnatural  state  of  affairs  that  we  are  here  to 
protest." 

"  But  what  is  it  you  want?  "  asked  the  mayor, 
somewhat  nettled  because  O'Brien,  instead  of 
backing  him  up,  was  busy  piling  three  million 


CHILDREN   THAT   LEAD    US 

golden  dollars  on  the  floor  in  stacks  two  and  a 
half  feet  high. 

"  We  want  to  be  left  alone !  "  The  reply 
came  in  a  chorus  of  trebles,  pipings,  quavers, 
and  adolescent  falsettos  that  caused  the  mayor 
to  lift  his  hands  to  his  forehead  entreating 
silence.  "We  want  our  old  privileges  again. 
We  want  to  be  allowed  just  to  grow  up." 

"  Yassir,"  shrilled  one  voice  above  the  others, 
"  jist  to  grow  up." 

The  mayor  raised  himself  in  his  chair  and  his 
eyes  lit  up  with  surprise  at  the  sight  of  a  well- 
known  black  little  face  at  the  very  end  of  the 
second  row. 

"What,  Topsy,  you  here?"  he  called  out. 
"  Haven't  you  done  growing  all  these  sixty 
years,  nearly  ?  " 

"  Yassir,"  answered  Topsy,  inserting  an  in 
dex  finger  into  her  mouth.  "  Ah  was  shure 
growin'  fas';  but  Massa  Booker  Washin'ton 
173 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

he  says  that  ah  and  the  likes  of  me  was  charged 
with  th'  future  of  the  negro  race.  An'  that 
skyeered  me  so  ah  made  up  mah  mind  ah 
wouldn'  grow  no  further." 

The  mayor  turned  to  Helen.  "  You  under 
stand  of  course,  my  dear,  that  I  cannot  lay  a 
proposition  of  so  vague  a  nature  before  the 
Board  of  Aldermen.  They  are  a  rather  un 
imaginative  set  of  men." 

"  We  have  drawn  up  a  list  of  demands,  your 
Honour,  in  terms  precise  enough  to  make  it  a 
sufficient  basis  for  practical  legislation.  May  I 
read  the  list  to  you,  papa?  " 

"  Yes,  my  dear,"  he  replied,  and  rising  from 
his  chair  he  put  his  arms  about  her  and  kissed 
her.  Her  forehead  was  cool  to  his  burning  lips. 
"  Pray  proceed,  Miss  Chairman." 

And  Helen  read  in  her  high-pitched,  pet 
ulantly  graceful  soprano :  "  Resolutions  adopted 
at  a  special  meeting  of  the  Central  Bureau  of 
174 


CHILDREN    THAT   LEAD    US 

the  Federated  Children's  Organisations  of  the 
United  States: 

"  1.  Henceforth  the  proportion  of  child  fic 
tion  in  any  magazine  shall  be  restricted  to  ten 
per  cent,  of  the  total  contents  of  such  publica 
tion;  and  no  magazine  fiction  child  under  the 
age  of  twelve  shall  be  represented  as  possessing 
an  amount  of  intelligence  greater  than  the  com 
bined  wisdom  of  its  parents. 

"  2.  The  married  heroine  of  a  society  drama 
who  has  consistently  preferred  yachting  trips, 
bridge,  and  the  opera  to  the  company  of  her 
children  shall  be  precluded  from  calling  upon 
them  for  aid  to  save  herself  from  the  dangers  of 
a  mad  infatuation. 

"  3.  Children  under  the  age  of  eighteen  shall 
be  employed  in  no  form  of  industry  whatsoever. 
If  there  are  not  enough  hands  to  produce  piece 
goods  for  the  Congo  and  the  Philippines,  let 
them  draft  all  adult  motor-car  chauffeurs,  dia- 
175 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

mond  polishers,  wine  agents,  amateur  coach 
drivers,  settlement  workers,  preachers  of  the 
simple  life,  and  writers  of  musical  comedy. 

"4.  In  the  public  schools  there  shall  be  no 
talks  or  lessons  dealing  with  the  duties  of  citi 
zenship.  The  time  now  given  to  that  subject 
shall  be  devoted  to  the  reading  of  dime  novels 
and  fairy  tales,  so  that  on  graduating,  chil 
dren  shall  not  be  confronted  with  so  startling  a 
contrast  between  the  realities  of  life  and  what 
they  have  learned  at  school. 

"  5.  Cooking  and  other  branches  of  domestic 
science  shall  no  longer  be  taught  in  the  schools. 
One-half  of  us  expect  to  live  in  family  hotels 
and  the  other  half  will  probably  be  in  no  posi 
tion  to  afford  the  expensive  ingredients  em 
ployed  in  scientific  cookery. 

"  6.  Mr.  Francis  Galton,  who  invented 
Eugenics,  and  Messrs.  Karl  Pearson  and  Sidney 
Webb,  who  helped  to  popularise  it,  shall  be  ex- 
176 


CHILDREN    THAT   LEAD    US 

ecuted.     Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  shall  be  banished 
to  a  desert  island." 

And  the  mayor  all  the  while  kept  thinking  how 
like  her  mother  Helen  was :  her  voice,  her  hair, 
her  eyes,  but  especially  her  voice.  It  filled  the 
room  with  many-coloured  vibrations  of  the  con 
sistency  of  building  concrete  and  hid  completely 
from  the  mayor's  sight  the  crowd  of  young 
faces,  O'Brien,  the  Board  of  Aldermen,  and  the 
three  million  presidents  of  the  Board  of  Educa 
tion.  Only  Helen  remained  and  she  came  close 
to  him  and  laid  her  cool  fingers  on  his  aching 
head. 

The  mayor  started  up  to  find  his  wife  bend 
ing  over  him. 

"  Edward,"  she  was  saying,  "  you  promised 
me  you  would  go  to  bed  early." 

"  My  dear,"  he  replied,  "  I  would  have  if  I 
had  not  fallen  asleep  in  my  chair.     Have  you 
had  a  pleasant  evening  at  the  theatre?  " 
177 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  It  is  dreadful  weather,"  she  said,  "  and  I 
have  a  bit  of  cold.  I  suppose  I  shouldn't  have 
gone  out  to-night,  but  it  was  the  last  chance, 
and  you  know  the  children  would  see  '  Peter 
Pan.'  " 


178 


XVIII 
THE  MARTIANS 

THE  saddest  thing  about  the  recent  announce 
ment  that  there  are  no  canals  on  Mars  is  that 
Robert  and  I  will  now  have  so  little  to  talk 
about.  Robert  is  my  favourite  waiter,  and  when 
he  found  out  that  I  am  what  the  newspapers 
call  a  literary  worker,  he  made  up  his  mind 
that  the  ordinary  topics  of  light  conversation 
would  not  do  at  all  for  me.  After  prolonged 
resistance  on  my  part  he  has  succeeded  in  re 
ducing  our  common  interests  to  two :  the  canals 
on  Mars  and  French  depopulation.  Now  and 
then  I  venture  to  bring  up  the  weather  or  the 
higher  cost  of  living.  Once  I  asked  him  what 
he  thought  about  the  need  of  football  reform. 
Once  I  tried  to  drag  in  Mme.  Steinheil.  But 
179 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Robert  listens  patiently,  and  when  I  have  con 
cluded  he  calls  my  attention  to  the  fact  that 
in  1908  the  number  of  deaths  in  France  ex 
ceeded  the  number  of  births  by  12,000.  When 
the  French  population  fails  to  stir  me,  he  won 
ders  whether  the  inhabitants  of  Mars  are  really 
as  intelligent  as  they  are  supposed  to  be. 

And  yet  it  must  have  been  I  that  first  sug 
gested  Mars  to  him.  Let  me  confess.  I  do  not 
love  the  Martian  canals  with  the  devouring 
passion  they  have  aroused  in  susceptible  souls 
like  Robert.  But  in  a  quieter  way  the  canals 
have  been  very  dear  to  me.  Their  threatened 
loss  comes  like  the  loss  of  an  old  friend;  a  dis 
tant  friend  whose  face  one  has  almost  forgot 
ten  and  never  hopes  to  see  again,  from  whom 
one  never  hopes  to  borrow,  and  to  whom  one 
never  expects  to  lend,  but  who  all  the  more  lives 
in  the  mind  a  remote,  impersonal,  and  gentle 
influence.  I  am  not  ashamed  to  admit  that  I 
180 


THE    MARTIANS 

have  learned  to  care  more  for  the  Martian 
canals  than  for  any  canals  much  closer  to  us. 
The  Panama  Canal  will  probably  cut  in  two  the 
distance  to  China,  and  give  us  a  monopoly  of 
the  cotton  goods  trade  in  the  Pacific;  but  I 
think  cotton  goods  are  unhealthful,  and  I  don't 
want  to  go  to  China.  The  Suez  Canal  may  be 
the  mainstay  of  the  British  Empire,  but  I  have 
no  doubt  that  it  would  make  just  as  satisfac 
tory  a  mainstay  for  some  other  empire.  My  in 
terest  in  the  Erie  Canal  is  connected  entirely 
with  the  fact  that  when  it  was  opened  some 
body  said,  "What  hath  God  wrought!"  or 
"  There  is  no  more  North  and  no  more  South  " 
— I  have  forgotten  which. 

I  have  always  had  a  softer  spot  in  my  heart 
for  the  inhabitants  of  Mars  than  for  any  other 
alien  people.  They  have  always  impressed  me 
as  more  unassuming  than  the  English,  fonder 
of  outdoor  exercise  than  the  Germans,  and  less 
181 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

addicted  to  garrulity  than  the  French.  They 
lead  simple,  laborious  lives,  digging  away  at 
their  canals  every  morning,  and  filling  them  up 
every  night,  for  reasons  best  known  to  them 
selves  and  certain  professors  at  Harvard.  I 
am  attracted  by  their  quaint  appearance.  Mr. 
H.  G.  Wells,  for  instance,  has  depicted  them 
with  cylindrical  bodies  of  sheet  iron,  long  legs 
like  a  tripod,  heads  like  an  enormous  diver's 
helmet,  and  arms  like  the  tentacles  of  an  octo 
pus — as  odd  a  sight  in  their  way  as  the  latest 
woman's  fashions  from  Paris.  Others  have 
described  the  Martians  as  pot-bellied  and  hair 
less,  with  goggle  eyes,  powerful  arms,  and 
curly,  gelatinous  legs,  the  result  of  mil 
lions  of  years  of  universal  culture  and  Subway 
congestion.  A  race  so  unattractive  could  not 
but  be  virtuous.  One  feels  instinctively  that 
there  is  no  graft  bound  up  with  the  digging  of 
the  Martian  canals. 

182 


THE   MARTIANS 

No,  anything  but  graft.  One  of  the  princi 
pal  reasons  why  I  am  so  fond  of  the  canals  on 
Mars  is  that  they  are  the  most  cheaply  built 
system  of  public  works  on  record.  A  professor 
of  astronomy  in  Italy  or  Arizona  finds  a  few 
dim  lines  on  the  plate  of  his  camera,  and  imme 
diately  Mars  is  equipped  with  a  splendid  net 
work  of  artificial  waterways.  Am  I  wrong  in 
thinking  of  the  Martian  canals  as  one  of  the 
greatest  triumphs  of  the  human  mind?  An 
African  savage  might  find  an  elephant's  skele 
ton  and  from  that  reconstruct  the  animal  in 
life.  Only  science  can  reconstruct  an  elephant 
from  a  half -inch  fragment  of  the  bone  of  his 
hind  leg.  Only  a  scientist  could  have  recon 
structed  the  Martian  canals  from  a  few  photo 
graphic  scratches.  Of  such  reconstructions  our 
civilisation  is  largely  made  up.  We  build  up 
a  statesman  out  of  a  bit  of  buncombe  and  a 
frock  coat;  a  genius  out  of  two  sonnets  and 
183 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

half  a  dozen  cocktails ;  a  dramatic  "  star  "  out 
of  a  lisp  and  a  giggle ;  a  two-column  news  story 
out  of  the  fragment  of  a  fact ;  a  multitude  out 
of  three  men  and  a  band;  a  crusade  out  of  one 
man  and  a  press  agent;  a  novel  out  of  the 
trimmings  of  earlier  novels;  a  reputation  out 
of  an  accident;  a  captain  of  industry  out  of 
an  itching  palm;  a  philanthropist  out  of  a 
beneficent  smile  and  a  platitude;  a  critic  out  of 
a  wise  look  and  a  fountain  pen;  and  a  social 
prophet  out  of  pretty  small  potatoes.  I  need 
not  allude  here  to  the  process  of  making  moun 
tains  out  of  molehills,  beams  out  of  motes,  and 
entire  summers  out  of  single  swallows. 

But  mind,  I  do  not  mean  that  I  was  ever 
sceptical  about  the  canals.  Indeed,  I  have  al 
ways  admired  the  way  in  which  their  exist 
ence  was  demonstrated.  There  have  always 
been  two  ways  of  proving  that  something  is 
true.  One  way  is  to  bring  forward  sixteen  rea- 
184 


THE   MARTIANS 

sons  why,  let  us  say,  the  moon  is  made  of  green 
cheese.  The  other  way  is  to  assume  that  the 
moon  is  made  of  green  cheese  and  to  answer 
sixteen  objections  brought  forward  against  the 
theory.  I  have  always  preferred  the  second 
method,  because  it  throws  the  burden  of  proof 
on  your  opponent.  There  is  no  argument  un 
der  the  sun  that  cannot  be  refuted.  Obviously, 
then,  it  is  an  advantage  to  let  your  opponents 
supply  the  argument  while  you  supply  the 
refutation. 

Neglect  this  precaution,  and  you  are  in  diffi 
culties  from  the  start.  You  contend,  for  in 
stance,  that  the  moon  must  be  made  of  cheese 
because  the  moon  and  cheese  are  both  round,  as 
a  rule.  True,  says  your  opponent,  but  so  are 
doughnuts,  women's  arguments,  and,  occasion 
ally,  the  wheels  on  a  trolley  car.  The  moon  and 
cheese,  you  go  on,  both  come  after  dinner. 
Yes,  says  your  opponent,  but  so  do  unwelcome 
185 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

visitors,  musical  comedies,  and  indigestion. 
Then,  you  say,  there  is  the  cow  who  jumped 
over  the  moon.  Would  she  have  resorted  to 
such  extraordinary  procedure  if  she  had  not 
perceived  that  the  moon  was  made  of  cheese 
from  her  own  milk?  Well  (says  your  oppo 
nent),  the  cow  might  merely  have  been  trying 
to  gain  a  broader  outlook  upon  life.  And  here 
you  are  thirteen  reasons  from  the  end,  and  your 
hands  hopelessly  full. 

Now  compare  the  advantages  of  the  other 
method.  You  adopt  a  resolute  bearing  and  de 
clare  :  "  The  moon  is  made  of  green  cheese." 
It  is  now  for  your  opponent  to  speak.  He 
argues :  "  But  that  would  make  the  moon's  in 
gredients  different  from  those  of  the  earth  and 
other  celestial  bodies."  "  Not  at  all,"  you  say ; 
"  the  earth  is  made  up  largely  of  chalk,  and 
what  is  the  difference  between  chalk  and  cheese, 
except  in  the  price  ?  "  "  But,  if  it's  green 
186 


THE    MARTIANS 

cheese  the  moon  is  made  of,"  asks  your  oppo 
nent,  "  why  does  it  look  yellow?  "  "  Only  the 
natural  effect  of  atmospheric  refraction,"  you 
reply  calmly ;  "  remember  how  a  politician's 
badly  soiled  reputation  will  shine  out  a  bril 
liant  white,  through  the  favourable  atmosphere 
that  surrounds  a  Congressional  investigating 
committee.  Recall  how  a  lady  who  is  green  with 
envy  at  her  neighbour's  new  hat  will  turn  pink 
with  delight  when  the  two  meet  in  the  street 
and  kiss.  Recall  how  the  same  lady's  com 
plexion  of  roses  and  milk  will  assume  its  nat 
ural  yellow  under  the  candid  dissection  of  her 
dearest  friends."  Your  opponent  might  go 
on  marshalling  his  objections  forever,  and  you 
would  have  no  difficulty  in  knocking  them  on 
the  head. 

So   I  used   to   believe.     But  if  the  method 
breaks  down  in  the  case  of  Mars  and  its  ca 
nals,  it  breaks  down  everywhere  else.     If  there 
187 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

are  no  canals  on  Mars,  what  about  the  bless 
ings  of  the  tariff,  which  are  based  on  exactly 
the  same  kind  of  reasoning?  What  about  the 
efficacy  of  mental  healing?  What  about  the 
advantages  of  giving  up  coffee?  What  about 
the  impending  invasion  of  California  by  the 
Japanese?  What  about  the  Kaiser's  qualifica 
tions  as  an  art  critic?  What  about  the  re 
straining  influence  of  publicity  on  corpora 
tions?  What  about  the  connection  between 
easy  divorce  and  the  higher  life?  What  about 
the  divine  right  of  railroad  presidents?  What 
about  the  theatrical  manager's  passion  for  a 
purified  stage?  What  about  the  value  of  all 
anti-fat  medicines?  All  of  these  things  have 
been  shown  to  be  true  by  assuming  that  they 
are  true.  If  the  canals  on  Mars  go,  all  these 
have  to  go.  And  that  makes  me  almost  as  sad 
as  the  fact  that  I  shall  have  nothing  to  talk 
about  with  my  favourite  waiter. 
188 


XIX 

THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR— II 

"  THE  idea  of  this  exquisite  little  collection 
of  frauds  and  forgeries,"  said  Cooper,  "  — and 
I  don't  believe  I  am  boasting  when  I  speak  of 
my  few  treasures  as  exquisite — came  to  me  in  a 
natural  enough  way.  One  of  the  bitterest  trials 
the  connoisseur  has  to  contend  with,  is  the  con 
sciousness  that  no  amount  of  care  and  expense 
can  guarantee  him  an  absolutely  flawless  col 
lection.  The  suspicion  of  the  experts  has  fallen 
upon  not  a  single  picture,  brass,  marble  or  iron 
in  his  galleries;  and  yet  as  he  walks  those  gal 
leries  the  unhappy  owner  groans  under  the 
moral  conviction  that  there  are  spurious  pic 
tures  on  his  walls,  spurious  marbles  in  his  halls, 
spurious  carvings  and  coins  under  his  glass 
189 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

cases,  and  that  there  they  must  stay  until  dis 
covered  and  exposed. 

"  A  perfect  collection,  therefore,  in  the  sense 
of  a  collection  in  which  every  object  can  be 
traced  back  with  absolute  certainty  to  its 
author  and  its  place  of  origin,  is  impossible. 
Unless,  and  that  is  how  the  inspiration  came," 
said  Cooper,  "  unless  one  set  to  collecting  ob 
jects  of  art  which  have  been  proved  to  be 
fraudulent.  Then  and  only  then,  could  one  be 
sure  that  one's  treasures  were  just  what  one 
believed  them  to  be.  And  that  is  just  what  I 
set  out  to  do.  I  began  buying  objects  of  art, 
which,  after  masquerading  under  a  great  name, 
had  been  exposed  and  given  up  to  scorn.  I 
have  kept  at  it  for  twenty  years,  and  I  can 
now  point  to  what  no  American  multi-million 
aire  can  ever  boast  of,  a  collection  made  up 
entirely  of  "  fakes."  When  I  stroll  through 
my  little  museum  I  am  obsessed  by  no  doubts. 
190 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — II 

I  am  as  certain  as  I  am  of  being  alive  that  no 
genuine  Leonardo  or  Holbein  or  Manet  or  Cel 
lini  has  found  its  way  under  my  roof. 

"  I  must  admit,"  Cooper  went  on,  "  that  the 
question  of  economy  has  been  an  important  fac 
tor  in  the  case.  When  we  first  set  up  house 
keeping,  a  year  after  our  marriage,  our  means 
were  not  unlimited  and  our  tastes  were  of  the 
very  highest.  Buying  the  best  work  or  even 
the  second-best  work  of  the  best  painters  was 
out  of  the  question.  But  buying  cheap  copies 
of  the  masters,  replicas,  casts,  photogravures, 
was  equally  impossible.  The  idea  of  owning 
anything  that  some  one  else  may  own  at  the 
same  time  is  abhorrent  to  the  true  collector.  On 
the  other  hand,  if  we  went  in  for  spurious  mas 
terpieces,  we  were  sure  of  securing  unique 
specimens  at  very  small  expense.  And  I  will 
not  deny  that  the  bargain  element  appealed 
very  strongly  to  Mrs.  Cooper.  Most  of 
191 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

our  things  we  got  at  really  fabulous  reductions. 
There  was  the  crown  of  an  Assyrian  princess 
of  the  twenty-fourth  century  B.C.,  for  which 
one  of  the  leading  European  museums  paid 
$75,000,  and  which,  after  it  was  shown  that  it 
had  been  made  by  a  Copenhagen  jeweller  in 
1907,  I  purchased  from  the  museum  for  some 
thing  like  fifty-five  dollars,  plus  the  freight. 
This  charming  little  landscape  with  sheep  and 
a  shepherd  boy  brought  $23,000  in  a  Fifth 
Avenue  auction  room  two  years  ago.  Three 
months  after  it  was  sold,  a  certain  Mrs.  Smith 
on  Staten  Island  sued  her  husband  for  deser 
tion  and  non-support,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
proceedings  it  was  brought  out  that  Smith  made 
$10,000  a  year  painting  Corots  and  Daubignys, 
and  that  the  $23,000  picture  was  one  of  his 
latest  achievements.  I  got  it  for  a  little  over 
one  hundred  dollars.  I  am  really  proud  of  the 
picture,  because  Smith  has  put  into  it  enough 
192 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — II 

of  the  Corot  quality  to  deceive  many  an  expert 
observer.  If  I  were  not  in  possession  of  the 
documentary  proof  that  Smith  painted  the  pic 
ture  in  1908,  I  should  myself  be  tempted  at 
times  to  believe  that  Smith  and  his  wife  lied 
in  court  and  that  the  picture  is  really  a 
Corot. 

"  But  these  are  the  chances,"  said  Cooper, 
"  that  every  art-lover  must  take.  I  have  said 
that  at  present  I  feel  perfectly  sure  that  not 
a  single  genuine  work  has  crept  in  to  vitiate 
my  collection.  And  that  is  true.  But  only  a 
few  weeks  ago  I  had  a  very  bad  quarter  of  an 
hour  indeed  over  this  spurious  Tanagra  fig 
urine.  It  had  been  bought  for  a  museum  not 
one  hundred  miles  from  here  by  a  patron  who 
was  a  good  friend  of  mine,  and  who  had  paid 
several  thousand  dollars  for  the  statuette.  I 
was  in  the  room  with  Hawley  when  Stimson,  our 
very  greatest  Greek  archaeologist  and  art- 
193 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

expert,  entered,  and,  catching  sight  of  the  lit 
tle  figure,  picked  it  up,  studied  it  for  a  few 
moments,  smelt  it,  licked  it  with  his  tongue, 
pressed  it  to  his  cheek,  and  handed  it  back  to 
my  friend  with  a  single,  blasting  comment — 
'  fake.'  We  two  were  incredulous,  but  within 
fifteen  minutes  Stimson  had  convinced  us  that 
the  thing  was  a  palpable  fraud.  Quite  beside 
himself  with  vexation,  Hawley  lifted  up  the 
statuette  and  was  about  to  dash  it  into  frag 
ments  on  the  ground,  when  I  caught  his  arm. 
'  Let  me  have  it,'  I  said ;  and  I  carried  it  home 
in  great  glee. 

"  Well,  a  few  weeks  later  I  was  showing  my 
collection  to  Dr.  Friedheimer  of  Berlin,  who 
is  a  much  greater  man  even  than  Stimson.  The 
German  savant  stopped  in  fascination  before 
the  Tanagra  figurine.  '  A  pretty  good  imita 
tion,'  I  said.  He  seized  the  statuette  with  trem 
bling  fingers.  '  Imidation ! '  he  shouted.  *  Chen- 
194 


COMPLETE   COLLECTOR— II 

uine,  chenuine  as  de  hairs  on  your  het.  Himmel, 
wat  a  find ! '  And  he  proceeded  to  do  what 
Stimson  had  done,  and  he  smelt  it  and  licked  it, 
and  rubbed  it  against  his  beard,  and  I  am  not 
sure  but  that  he  knocked  it  against  his  fore 
head  to  test  its  texture.  And  then  in  his  agi 
tation  he  let  the  figure  fall,  and  it  broke  in  two 
on  the  floor,  and  inside  we  found  a  bit  of  news 
paper  dated  Naples,  January  27,  1903.  Dr. 
Friedheimer  could  only  say,  '  Unerhort ! '  but 
I  was  nearly  frantic  with  delight.  I  repaired 
the  statuette,  and  it  now  holds,  as  you  see,  the 
place  of  honour  in  my  collection." 

As  we  sat  over  our  coffee  and  cigars,  Cooper 
grew  reflective.  "  After  all,"  he  said,  "  is  not 
the  fabricator  of  frauds  fully  as  great  an  artist 
as  the  man  whose  work  he  imitates?  Take  the 
famous  marble  Aphrodite  of  a  few  years  ago, 
which  was  attributed  by  some  critics  to  Prax 
iteles,  and  by  some  critics  to  Scopas,  until 
195 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

proof  came  that  it  had  been  made  in  Hoboken. 
Consider  the  labour  that  went  into  the  fraud. 
For  years,  probably,  the  dishonest  sculptor  was 
engaged  in  preliminary  studies  for  the  work. 
He  spent  months  in  libraries,  museums,  and 
the  lecture-rooms  of  learned  professors.  He 
impregnated  himself  with  the  spirit  of  Greek 
art.  He  devoted  months  to  searching  for  a 
suitable  piece  of  antique  marble.  How  long  he 
was  in  carving  it,  I  can  only  guess.  When  it 
was  completed,  he  boiled  it  in  oil ;  then  he  boiled 
it  in  milk ;  then  he  boiled  it  in  soap ;  then  he 
boiled  it  in  a  concoction  of  molasses  and  wine; 
then  he  buried  it  in  moist  soil,  and  let  it  age 
for  three  years. 

"  Now,  suppose  the  statue  had  been  really 
carved  by  Praxiteles.  That  joyous  master  and 
genius  might  have  put  two  weeks'  work,  three 
weeks'  work,  a  month's  work,  upon  it,  and  there 
you  were.  What  was  the  labour  of  a  lifetime  to 
196 


COMPLETE   COLLECTOR  — II 

the  other  man  was  to  Praxiteles  just  an  easy 
bit  of  routine.  If  art  is  a  man's  soul  and  hopes 
and  brain  and  sweat  and  blood  put  into  con 
crete  form,  who  produced  the  truer  work  of 
art,  Praxiteles  or  the  unknown  sculptor  of  Ho- 
boken?  I  speak  only  of  the  comparative  ex 
penditure  of  effort.  So  far  as  the  artistic  re 
sult  is  concerned,  it  is  evident,  from  the  ease 
with  which  we  were  taken  in,  that  there  is  no 
great  difference  between  the  school  of  Hoboken 
and  the  school  of  Praxiteles." 


197 


XX 

WHEN  A  FRIEND  MARRIES 

TAKING  dinner  with  an  old  friend  who  has  just 
been  married  is  an  experience  I  regard  with  ap 
prehension.  In  the  first  place,  it  is  always 
awkward  to  be  introduced  to  a  woman  who  be 
gins  by  being  jealous  of  you  because  you  knew 
her  husband  long  before  she  did.  She  may  be 
a  nice  woman;  in  fact,  from  the  air  of  almost 
imbecile  happiness  that  invests  young  Hobson, 
you  are  sure  she  is.  But  since  it  is  natural  to 
hate  those  whom  we  have  injured,  it  is  natural 
for  young  wives  to  dislike  their  husband's 
friends. 

People  say  that  a  woman  begins  to  prepare 
for  marriage  at  the  age  of  five.     Judging  from 
the  absolutely  spontaneous  way  in  which  the 
198 


WHEN   A  FRIEND   MARRIES 

Hobsons  have  taken  to  it,  marriage  is  a  career 
that  calls  for  no  preparation  whatever.  I  am 
not  referring,  of  course,  to  the  outward  aspects 
of  early  housekeeping.  The  little  difficulties  that 
beset  the  newly  married  are  there.  I  can  see  that 
my  hostess  is  more  anxious  about  the  creamed 
potatoes  than  she  will  be  five  years  hence.  Her 
attitude  to  the  maid  who  waits  on  us  is  by  turns 
excessively  severe  and  excessively  timid.  I 
learn  that  the  dining-room  table  has  been  sent 
back  twice  to  the  store,  and  is  still  not  the  one 
originally  ordered.  But  these  are  trifles.  It  is 
with  the  Hobsons'  souls  I  am  concerned;  and 
their  souls  are  perfectly  at  ease  in  their  new 
estate. 

The  first  few  minutes,  like  all  introductions, 
go  stiffly.  The  bride  smiles  and  says  that  Jack 
has  often  spoken  to  her  about  you.  Where 
upon  you  remember  that  there  are  not  many 
secrets  a  young  husband  keeps  from  his  wife. 
199 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Jack  is  no  sieve,  but  he  would  be  more  than 
human  if  he  has  failed  to  dissect  your  little 
weaknesses  and  humours  for  his  new  wife.  He 
has  probably  emphasized  the  two  or  three  par 
ticular  little  failings  of  character  which  have 
prevented  you  from  realising  the  brilliant  prom 
ise  you  showed  at  college.  At  bottom,  Jack 
thinks,  you  have  the  capacity  for  being  almost 
as  happy  as  he,  Jack,  is.  But  then,  again,  if 
Mrs.  Hobson  does  know  you  thoroughly  well, 
it  strikes  you  that  there  is  that  much  trouble 
saved,  and  you  sit  down  to  chat  with  a  fair 
sense  of  intimacy. 

Toward  such  conversation  you  and  the  man 
of  the  house  are  the  principal  contributors. 
You  speak  of  college  days  and  contemporary 
politics,  and  other  things  that  the  wife  is  not 
interested  in,  but  she  smiles  graciously,  and  now 
and  then  takes  sides  with  you  against  her  hus 
band.  At  one  point  in  the  conversation  you 
200 


WHEN   A   FRIEND    MARRIES 

look  up  and  find  her  quietly  scrutinising  you. 
And  you  recall  what  you  have  heard  concern 
ing  the  match-making  propensities  of  young 
wives,  and  you  wonder  uneasily  if  to  herself  she 
is  running  over  a  list  of  girl  friends  and  try 
ing  to  decide  which  one  will  suit  you  best.  You 
even  suspect  that  she  inclined  toward  a  Mar- 
jorie  or  an  Edith,  who  is  plain,  but  clever,  a 
good  manager,  and  of  an  affectionate  disposi 
tion.  Happily,  at  that  moment  the  bride 
thanks  you  for  your  handsome  wedding  gift. 

At  table  the  visitor  begins  to  be  more  at  ease. 
For  one  thing,  there  is  the  traditional  hazing 
process  to  which  the  bride  must  be  subjected. 
Jack  takes  the  lead.  Admitting  that  to-night's 
repast  is  an  unqualified  success,  he  hints  that 
there  have  been  occasions  when,  if  he  only  would, 
there  might  be  a  different  tale  to  tell.  The  vis 
itor  protests;  yet  in  the  extravagant  praise  he 
resorts  to  there  is  a  suggestion  of  mild  banter 
201 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

which  is  considered  the  proper  thing.  The 
wife  professes  to  enter  into  the  joke;  but  in  her 
heart  she  laughs  to  see  the  two  men  go  solemnly 
through  the  stupid  and  outworn  ceremonial. 
Young  wives  nowadays  are  excellent  cooks. 
This  one  has  secretly  pursued  a  three  months' 
course  in  domestic  science  and  has  a  diploma 
hidden  away  somewhere.  But  she  pretends  to 
be  properly  outraged  by  our  foolish  satire,  and 
insists  on  both  being  helped  a  second  time  to 
the  custard.  Jack,  in  fact,  eats  all  that  remains. 
It  makes  dish-washing  easier,  he  says. 

And  as  the  visitor  steers  his  way  pleasantly 
through  the  meal,  he  makes  the  acquaintance  of 
an  extraordinary  number  of  relatives.  The 
spoons,  he  finds,  are  from  Aunt  Amy.  Aunt 
Amy  lives  in  Syracuse  and  at  first  objected  to 
the  match.  The  salt  cellar  is  from  a  male 
cousin  who  (you  learn  this  from  Jack),  it  was 
thought  at  one  time,  would  be  the  fortunate 


WHEN   A  FRIEND   MARRIES 

man  himself — that  is,  until  Jack  appeared  on 
the  scene.  Poor  fellow,  he  sought  consolation 
by  marrying,  only  two  months  later,  a  nice  girl 
from  Alexandria,  Va.  The  cut-glass  salad  dish 
is  from  the  bride's  dearest  friend  at  boarding- 
school,  a  charming  girl,  who  paints  and  sings 
and  is  now  studying  music  in  Berlin. 

When  the  coffee  is  brought  in,  Jack  asks  if 
you  will  smoke.  This  is,  in  a  way,  the  most 
dangerous  situation  of  the  entire  evening.  If 
you  say  yes,  Jack  is  apt  to  pass  the  cigars  and 
and  say,  "  Go  right  ahead.  /  have  given  it  up, 
you  know,  and  I  feel  all  the  better  for  it."  But 
if  you  are  expert  in  reading  faces,  and  decide 
that  the  bride  probably  has  conscientious 
scruples  against  the  habit,  and  you  reply 
"  No,"  Jack  is  likely  to  say,  "  Sorry,  but  Alice 
allows  me  one  cigar  a  day  after  dinner,"  and 
you  are  left  to  suffer  the  torments  of  the  lost, 
and  have  lied  into  the  bargain.  Nor  is  it  pos- 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

sible  to  lay  down  any  rule  for  arriving  at  the 
correct  reply  under  such  circumstances.  A  hur 
ried  glance  about  the  house  will  not  help  one. 
A  handsome  bronze  ash-tray  may  be  only  a  pa 
perweight.  Young  wives  are  in  the  habit  of 
buying  their  husbands  the  most  ornate  smoking 
apparatus,  with  the  understanding  that  it  shall 
never  be  used. 

It  is  after  dinner  that  reflection  comes;  and 
with  it  comes  a  touch  of  sorrowful  wonder. 
Jack  bears  himself  with  great  equanimity  in  his 
new  condition;  but  it  is  apparent,  nevertheless, 
that  he  has  changed  from  what  you  knew  him. 
In  the  first  place,  he  has  built  up  a  comprehen 
sive  system  of  domestic  serfdom  to  which  he 
cheerfully  submits.  He  glories  in  his  enslave 
ment  ;  he  rattles  his  chains.  He  actually  boasts 
of  the  habit  he  has  acquired  of  dropping  in  at 
the  grocer's  every  morning  on  his  way  to  the  of 
fice.  When  it  is  the  maid's  day  out,  Jack  in- 
204 


WHEN   A   FRIEND    MARRIES 

sists  on  helping  with  the  dishes  and  he  tells  you 
with  pride  that,  given  plenty  of  hot  water,  there 
is  nothing  in  that  line  which  he  would  hesitate 
to  undertake.  He  makes  it  a  point  to  visit 
Washington  Market  at  least  twice  a  week,  and 
he  comes  home  with  cuts,  joints,  steaks,  rounds, 
poultry,  fish,  game,  and  fruits  in  dazzling 
variety.  He  carries  these  things  conspicuously 
in  the  Subway.  And  Jack's  wife  is  appreciative 
of  his  kind  intentions,  and  lets  him  bring,  from 
long  distances,  meats  which  she  can  purchase  at 
several  cents  a  pound  less  from  her  butcher  two 
blocks  away. 

The  passion  for  acquiring  food  commodities 
is  only  one  phase  of  Jack's  new  character.  You 
begin  to  see  now  that  all  these  years  you  have 
never  suspected  what  capacities  for  home-build 
ing  he  had  in  him.  In  the  presence  of  any  kind 
of  article  offered  for  sale  his  overmastering 
passion  is  to  buy  the  thing  and  take  it  home. 
205 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Instinct  apparently  impels  him  to  store  up 
quite  useless  supplies  against  a  future  emer 
gency.  He  haunts  hardware  stores,  he  rum 
mages  in  antique  furniture  shops,  and  you  may 
see  him  any  day  during  the  lunch  hour  flatten 
ing  his  nose  against  windowfuls  of  copper  and 
brass  ware.  He  buys  patent  hammers  by  the 
quarter  dozen,  as  well  as  nails,  tacks,  screws, 
bolts,  casters,  brackets,  and  curtain  poles.  He 
brings  home  Japanese  vases  from  the  auction 
rooms.  One  day  he  acquired  a  step-ladder;  it 
came  by  wagon  because  they  refused  to  let  him 
take  it  into  the  Subway. 

And  Jack's  wife  acquiesces  in  his  self-imposed 
servitude.  She  does  not  demand  it;  she  is  even 
a  good  deal  incommoded  by  it.  But  her 
woman's  instinct  tells  her  that  the  thing  is  a 
disease,  which  a  man  must  catch,  like  the 
measles.  Until  the  husband's  passion  for  home- 
building  quiets  down,  she  is  content  to  accept 
206 


WHEN   A   FRIEND    MARRIES 

the  unnatural  situation;  she  is  even  proud  to 
have  inspired  it. 

But  as  Jack  prattles  on,  and  Jack's  wife 
smiles  over  her  embroidery  frame,  it  comes  over 
you  that,  despite  all  the  kindly  communion  of 
the  evening,  you  are  an  outsider  there.  You 
ask  yourself  bitterly  whether  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  constancy  in  man,  whether  there  is 
such  a  thing  as  true  comradeship  or  affection. 
For  fifteen  years,  from  your  freshman  year  at 
high  school,  you  and  Jack  have  been  what  the 
world  calls  friends.  What  are  you  now?  Jack 
still  calls  you  friend;  apparently  that  is  the 
reason  why  you  have  just  dined  with  him  and 
his  wife.  But  in  reality  you  are  not  there  as 
his  friend.  You  are  there  as  the  guest  of  this 
newly-constituted  social  unit,  this  new  family. 
You  are  there  not  as  a  person,  but  as  part  of 
an  institution. 

And  just  when  you  are  ready  to  accept  the 
207 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

new  situation  you  are  swept  away  by  the  un 
reality  of  the  entire  arrangement.  It  is  incon 
ceivable  that  Jack  should  have  thrown  you  over 
for  this  alien  person  whom  he  calls  wife.  Your 
habits  and  Jack's  are  so  much  alike;  your 
tastes,  your  outlook  upon  life.  You  used  to 
play  the  same  games  at  college,  sing  the  same 
songs,  smoke  the  same  tobacco,  wear  each 
other's  clothes,  and  now  Jack  has  thrown  you 
over  for  one  with  whom  in  the  nature  of  things 
he  can  have  none  of  those  habits  in  common. 
It  is  not  merely  puzzling;  it  grows  almost  ab 
surd.  You  shake  your  head  over  it  some  time 
after  you  have  said  good-night,  and  the  bride 
has  told  you  that  as  a  dear  friend  of  Jack's, 
they  always  will  be  pleased  to  have  you  call. 


208 


XXI 

THE  PERFECT  UNION  OF  THE  ARTS 

I  HAVE  never  had  the  slightest  reason  to  doubt 
Harding's  truthfulness.  The  following  episode, 
I  remember,  was  told  with  more  than  Harding's 
usual  gravity.  I  can  do  nothing  better  than 
to  give  it  here  in  Harding's  own  words  so  far 
as  I  can  recall  them: 

On  the  third  day  after  his  arrival,  my  guest, 
Muhammad  Abu  Nozeyr,  said  to  me,  "  O  Hard 
ing  Effendi,  I  desire  greatly  to  witness  a  pres 
entation  of  what  you  and  the  wife  of  your 
bosom,  on  whom  both  be  peace,  have  often  re 
ferred  to  as  Grand  Opera." 

I  replied,  with  involuntary  astonishment. 
"  Son  of  a  hundred  sheiks,  forgive  my  seemingly 
derelict  hospitality.  But  I  should  have  asked 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

you  before  this  to  go  to  the  opera  with  us,  if  I 
had  not  thought  that  the  principles  of  your 
faith  were  opposed  thereto.  For  you  must 
know,  O  Father  of  the  Defenceless,  that  our 
women  go  there  unveiled  even  as  the  women  of 
the  people  that  you  see  on  our  streets,  and  that 
on  the  stage,  singers  of  both  sexes  indulge  in 
open  exaltation  of  that  thing  called  love,  which 
your  prophet  has  confined  within  the  walls  of 
the  haremlik." 

Abu  Nozeyr  laughed.  "  Your  knowledge  of 
our  customs,  Harding  Effendi,  is  fifty  years  be 
hind  the  times.  True,  I  come  from  the  desert, 
and  have  never  heard  your  singing  women  of  the 
stage.  But  did  not  one  of  the  learned  muftis 
at  yesterday's  evening  repast  declare  that 
'  Ai'da '  was  written  for  the  Khedewi  Ismail 
Pasha,  may  his  soul  rest  in  peace?  " 

"  Yes,"  I  said ;  "  but  you  will  understand, 
Dispenser  of  a  Thousand  Mercies,  why  at  first 
210 


PERFECT  UNION  OF  THE  ARTS 

blush  Islam  and  the  lyric  stage  should  strike 
me  as  somewhat  incompatible." 

"  Not  modern  Islam,"  he  replied.  "  Take  us 
not  too  literally.  I  am  told  that  your  people, 
like  others  of  the  Feringhi,  have  succeeded  in 
building  battleships  which  are  really  instru 
ments  of  peace ;  that  you  have  trust  companies 
in  which  you  place  no  confidence,  and  Open 
Doors  which  you  close  against  people  from  my 
part  of  the  world;  you  have  legislators  who 
speak  but  do  not  legislate,  and  a  Speaker  who 
legislates  but  does  not  speak ;  you  have  had  men 
in  your  White  House  who  always  saw  red,  and 
you  have  red-emblazoned  newspapers  which  are 
yellow ;  you  call  your  politicians  public  servants 
who  are  your  masters,  and  you  call  your  women 
the  masters,  but  will  not  let  them  vote.  Why, 
then,  should  you  be  so  surprised  at  any  seeming 
incongruity  in  others  ?  " 

"  I  am  convinced,  Abu  Nozeyr,"  I  said,  "  and 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

to-morrow  we  will  go  to  see  '  Tristan  und 
Isolde.'  But  shall  I  attempt  to  describe  for 
you,  in  a  few  words,  just  what  Grand  Opera 
is?" 

"  My  ear  is  open  to  your  words,  Harding  Ef- 
fendi." 

"  Know,  then,  Protector  of  the  Fatherless, 
that  the  music-drama  is  a  perfect  blending  of 
all  the  arts.  It  calls  to  its  aid  the  resources 
of  sculpture,  painting,  dancing,  together  with 
numerous  mechanical  agencies,  and  to  a  minor 
extent,  music  and  the  drama.  For  observe,  O 
Abu  Nozeyr,  that  each  art  aims  to  awake  its 
own  specific  emotion.  Sculpture  appeals  to 
our  sense  of  form,  painting  to  our  delight  in 
colour,  dancing  to  the  pleasure  of  rhythmic  mo 
tion,  the  mechanic  arts  to  our  liking  for  sudden 
action,  while  music  and  the  uttered  word  repre 
sent  the  union  of  the  clearest  and  vaguest  modes 
of  expressing  thought.  It  follows  therefore 


PERFECT  UNION  OF  THE  ARTS 

that  the  highest  phase  of  human  emotion  can 
only  be  expressed  by  that  art  which  gives  us 
simultaneously  the  living  form  of  a  Venus  de 
Milo  with  the  colouring  of  a  Titian,  the  grace 
of  a  Nautch  girl,  the  miracle-working  powers 
of  a  Hindu  fakir,  the  elocution  of  a  Demos 
thenes,  and  the  voice  of  a  Malibran." 

"  By  the  beard  of  the  Prophet,"  exclaimed 
Abu  Nozeyr,  "I  thought  such  bliss  was  to  be 
had  only  in  the  Paradise  of  the  Faithful;  and 
that  is  Grand  Opera,  Harding  Effendi?  " 

"With  certain  modifications,"  I  replied. 
"  Nothing  human  is  perfect,  Abu  Nozeyr.  It  is 
a  regrettable  circumstance  that  the  human 
voice  attains  its  perfect  development  many 
years  after  the  human  form.  Hence  our  heroes 
on  the  lyric  stage  are  all  middle-aged  and  our 
heroines  somewhat  heavy  in  movement.  I  have 
seen  a  pair  of  starving  lovers  in  an  operatic 
garret,  who  would  surely  not  have  passed  the 
213 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

scrutiny  of  a  United  Charities  investigator.  It 
is  also  to  be  regretted  that  adequate  voice-pro 
duction  leaves  no  breath  for  dancing  or  other 
forms  of  active  effort.  Hence  the  dance  with 
which  Carmen  fascinates  poor  Don  Jose,  argues 
an  intense  readiness  to  be  pleased  on  the  part 
of  the  latter,  and  Telramund's  defeat  at  the 
hands  of  Lohengrin  is  never  quite  free  from  a 
certain  degree  of  contributory  negligence." 

"  But  tell  me  this,  Harding  Effendi,  are  there 
composers  who  have  carried  the  union  of  the 
arts  to  a  higher  point  than  others  ?  " 

"  There  are,  O  Grandson  of  the  Wild  Ass. 
There  are  operas  in  which  at  certain  moments 
the  libretto  speaks  of  a  leaping  fire,  the  music 
plays  leaping  fire,  and  the  fire  actually  leaps 
and  blazes  on  the  stage.  But  unfortunately  it 
always  happens  that  the  words  cannot  be  heard 
because  of  the  orchestra,  and  the  fire  sinks 
when  the  orchestral  swell  rises,  and  rises  when 


PERFECT  UNION  OH  THE  ARTS 

the  orchestral  surge  subsides.  I  have  caught 
the  orchestral  sound  of  hammer  on  anvil  long 
before  the  two  have  come  into  contact,  and  have 
heard  Spring  described  as  entering  through  a 
door  which  persists  in  staying  closed.  I  have 
seen  boats  being  pushed  by  human  hands,  Rhine 
maidens  suspended  on  a  wire,  and  harvest  moons 
moving  in  orbits  unknown  to  Herschel  and  Pick 
ering." 

"  And  are  there  people  who  still  persist  in 
taking  their  sculpture,  painting,  drama,  and 
music  separately,  Harding  Effendi?" 

"  There  are ;  but  that  is  because  they  fail  to 
recognise  that  opera  is  a  perfect  union  of  all  the 
arts.  To-morrow,  Abu  Nozeyr,  we  go  to  hear 
*  Tristan  und  Isolde.'  It  appeals  to  every  one 
of  our  senses.  To  enjoy  it  completely,  how 
ever,  it  is  often  wise  to  close  one's  eyes  and  just 
hear  the  singer  sing." 


XXII 
AN  EMINENT  AMERICAN 

AFTER  dinner  I  asked  Herr  Grundschnitt  what 
headway  he  was  making  in  his  studies  of  Amer 
ican  life.  The  professor  was  in  more  than  his 
usually  mellow  mood.  He  had  enjoyed  his  dinner. 
He  liked  his  cigar.  He  confided  to  me  that  he 
was  hard  at  work  on  a  volume  of  sketches  deal 
ing  with  the  career  of  representative  success 
ful  Americans,  and  he  offered  to  read  me  one 
of  his  early  chapters.  If  the  following  sum 
mary  of  Herr  Grundschnitt's  account  of  the 
life  of  Wallabout  Smith  can  even  suggest  the 
extraordinary  impression  which  the  original 
produced  upon  me,  I  am  content. 

Wallabout  Smith  did  not  attain  recognition 
until  late  in  life.     I  gather  that  he  must  have 
216 


AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN 

been  well  over  fifty  when  a  former  President 
of  the  United  States  declared  that  Wallabout 
Smith,  by  raising  a  family  of  four  sons  and 
two  daughters,  had  done  more  for  his  country 
than  all  the  laws  enacted  by  the  Legislatures 
of  all  the  New  England  and  Middle  Atlantic 
States  since  the  Spanish-American  War.  Fame 
came  rapidly  after  this.  The  college  pro 
fessors  repeated  what  the  former  President 
said.  The  newspapers  repeated  what  the  college 
professors  said.  The  playwrights  repeated 
what  the  newspapers  said.  The  pulpit  repeated 
what  the  playwrights  said.  Interviewers  de 
scended  upon  Wallabout  Smith.  They  wore 
out  his  front  lawn,  the  hall  carpet,  and  the 
maid-servant's  temper;  but  they  always  found 
Smith  himself  patient,  affable,  ready  to  say 
whatever  they  wished  him  to  say. 

The  reporters  would  usually  begin  by  asking 
Wallabout  Smith  what  were  his  lighter  inter- 
217 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

ests  in  life.  "  I  find  my  greatest  pleasure," 
Smith  would  reply,  "  in  common  things.  For 
instance,  I  have  never  ceased  to  be  intensely  in 
terested  in  the  cost  of  shoes  and  stockings.  The 
subject  is  fascinating  and  inexhaustible.  One 
gets  tired  of  most  things,  but  there  has  never 
been  a  time  in  which  the  cost  of  shoes  and 
stockings  has  failed  to  appeal  with  peculiar 
force  to  me.  My  odd  moments  on  the  train 
have  as  a  rule  been  taken  up  with  that  ques 
tion.  If  you  have  ever  thought  upon  this  sub 
ject,  you  must  have  been  struck  with  the  fact 
that,  putting  food  aside,  shoes  and  stockings 
constitute  the  most  permanent  and  persistent 
human  need.  They  begin  with  the  first  few 
weeks  of  our  life,  and  they  continue  to  the  end ; 
the  size  alone  changes.  It  is  a  subject,  too, 
that  opens  up  such  wide  horizons.  For  while 
a  man  of  comparatively  little  leisure  can  con 
fine  himself  to  the  simple  topic  of  shoes  and 
218 


AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN 

stockings,  he  may,  if  he  so  desires,  widen  the 
field  of  his  interests  so  as  to  include  the  allied 
subjects  of  frocks,  jackets,  blouses,  caps,  and 
collars,  until  he  has  covered  the  entire  range  of 
children's  apparel.  Nor  is  that  all.  I  have 
spent  many  an  absorbing  hour  figuring  out  the 
annual  rate  of  increase  in  servants'  wages  and 
rent.  Of  late  years  I  have  been  in  the  habit 
of  putting  in  part  of  my  lunch  hour  in  a 
study  of  college  fees  and  tailors'  bills.  In  mo 
ments  of  extreme  physical  lassitude,  when  noth 
ing  else  appeals  to  me,  I  think  about  the  next 
quarterly  premium  on  my  insurance  policy." 

How  well-known  men  do  their  work  has  al 
ways  interested  the  public.  Few  newspaper 
men  omitted  to  question  Wallabout  Smith  on 
this  subject.  From  the  large  number  of  inter 
views  cited  by  Herr  Grundschnitt  we  may  build 
up  a  very  fair  picture  of  Wallabout  Smith's 
daily  routine.  It  was  his  habit  to  spend  a  good 
219 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

part  of  his  day  in  New  York  City.  He  would 
rise  about  six  o'clock  every  week-day  in  the 
year,  and,  snatching  a  hasty  breakfast,  would 
make  his  way  to  the  railroad  station,  pausing 
now  and  then  in  perplexity  as  he  tried  to  re 
call  what  it  was  his  wife  had  asked  him  to  bring 
home  from  town.  Sometimes  he  would  catch 
his  train  and  sometimes  he  would  not.  Arrived 
at  his  office,  he  would  remove  his  coat,  and, 
putting  on  a  black  alpaca  jacket  to  which  he 
was  greatly  attached,  he  would  proceed  to 
glance  over,  check,  and  transcribe  the  contents 
of  a  large  number  of  bills  and  vouchers  repre 
senting  the  daily  transactions  of  a  very  pros 
perous  commercial  enterprise  in  which  he  had 
no  proprietary  interest.  The  day's  work  would 
be  pleasantly  broken  up  by  frequent  inquiries 
from  the  general  manager's  office.  Every  now 
and  then  a  fellow-worker  would  take  a  moment 
from  his  duties  to  ask  Wallabout  Smith  how 
220 


AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN 

his  lawn  was  getting  on.  Sometimes  he  would 
be  summoned  to  the  telephone,  only  to  learn 
that  Central  had  called  the  wrong  number. 
Lunch  was  a  matter  of  a  few  minutes.  At  5.30 
every  afternoon  Wallabout  Smith  exchanged  his 
alpaca  jacket  for  his  street  coat  with  a  fine 
sense  of  weariness,  and  the  secure  conviction 
that  the  next  morning  would  find  the  same  task 
waiting  for  him  on  his  table.  u  I  have  no  hesi 
tation  in  stating,"  Smith  would  frequently  say, 
"  that  some  of  the  busiest  hours  of  my  life  have 
been  spent  at  my  office  desk." 

Walking  was  his  favourite  form  of  exercise. 
When  he  lived  in  the  city  during  the  first  few 
years  after  his  marriage,  he  used  to  walk  the 
floor  with  the  baby.  Later  when  the  children 
began  to  grow  up  and  he  moved  out  into  the 
country,  he  walked  to  and  from  the  station. 
His  gait  was  a  free,  manly  stride,  bordering 
close  upon  a  run,  in  the  morning,  and  a  more 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

deliberate,  sliding  pace,  somewhat  suggestive 
of  a  shuffle,  in  the  evening.  He  was  at  his 
best  when  tramping  the  country  roads  with  a 
congenial  companion  or  two  on  a  Sunday  after 
noon.  On  such  occasions  he  would  pour  forth 
a  continuous  stream  of  light-hearted  talk  on 
everything  under  the  sun — the  new  board  of 
village  trustees,  the  shameful  condition  of  the 
village  streets,  the  prospects  of  a  new  roof  for 
the  railway  station.  Good-nature  was  the  key 
note  of  his  character,  but  he  would  frequently 
sum  up  a  situation  or  a  person  with  a  sly  touch 
of  irony  or  a  trenchant  word  or  two.  He  once 
described  the  village  streets  as  being  paved 
chiefly  with  good  intentions.  Another  time  he 
characterised  the  minister  of  a  rival  church  as 
having  the  courage  of  his  wife's  convictions. 
But  such  flashes  of  satire  went  and  left  no 
rancour  behind  them.  His  high  spirits  we»e 
proof  against  everything  but  automobiles. 
222 


AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN 

These  he  detested,  not  because  they  made  walk 
ing  unpleasant  and  even  dangerous,  but  be 
cause  they  were  run  by  men  who  mortgaged 
their  homes  to  buy  motor  cars,  and  thus  threat 
ened  the  stability  of  business  conditions. 

Wallabout  Smith  would  often  be  asked  to 
lay  down  a  few  rules  for  those  who  wished  to 
emulate  his  success.  He  would  invariably  re 
ply  that  the  secret  of  bringing  up  children  was 
the  same  double  secret  that  underlay  success 
in  every  other  field — enthusiasm  and  patience. 
"  It  has  always  been  my  belief,"  he  would  say, 
"  that  the  head  of  a  family  should  spend  at 
least  as  much  time  with  his  children  as  he  does 
at  his  barber's  or  his  lodge,  and,  if  possible,  a 
little  more.  Children  undoubtedly  stand  in  need 
of  supervision.  In  the  beginning,  it  is  a  ques 
tion  largely  of  keeping  them  away  from  the 
matches  and  the  laudanum.  Fortunately,  we 
live  at  some  distance  from  a  trolley-line  and 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

there  is  no  well  in  our  back-yard.  As  my  chil 
dren  grew  up,  I  made  it  a  point  to  know  what 
books  they  were  reading  out  of  school  and 
whether  the  boys  were  addicted  to  the  filthy 
cigarette  habit.  On  the  subjects  of  breakfast 
foods  and  corporal  punishment,  I  have  always 
kept  an  open  mind." 

The  experiment  of  living  upon  a  basis  of  com 
radeship  with  one's  children  which  we  see  so 
frequentty  recommended  was  not  a  success  in 
the  case  of  Wallabout  Smith.  "  Although  my 
boys  are  fond  of  me,"  he  once  told  a  reporter, 
"  they  usually  regard  my  presence  as  a  bore. 
When  I  find  time  to  go  out  walking  with 
them,  they  do  their  best  to  lose  me,  and  when 
ever  we  divide  off  into  teams  for  a  game  of 
ball,  each  side  insists  on  my  going  with  the 
other  side.  I  have  made  up  my  mind  that  there 
is  a  time  for  being  with  one's  children  and  a 
time  for  letting  them  alone,  and  that  the  proper 


AN   EMINENT   AMERICAN 

time  for  being  with  them  is  when  they  are  in 
trouble  and  want  you,  and  the  proper  time  for 
letting  them  alone  is  when  they  are  happy  and 
wish  to  be  let  alone.  This  I  admit  is  the  re 
verse  of  the  common  practice,  and  probably 
there  is  something  to  be  said  for  parents  who 
grow  fond  of  their  children's  society  when 
they,  the  parents,  have  nothing  else  to  do.  As 
a  rule,  I  have  never  obtruded  myself  on  my 
boys,  being  confident  that  natural  affection  and 
the  recurrent  need  of  pocket-money  would  con 
stitute  a  sufficient  bond  between  us." 

There  was,  in  conclusion,  one  factor  in  his 
success  upon  which  Wallabout  Smith  would 
never  fail  to  lay  the  most  emphatic  stress,  and 
to  which  Herr  Grundschnitt  attached  equal  im 
portance.  "  Such  fame,"  he  would  say,  "  as 
has  fallen  to  my  share  must  be  attributed  in 
the  very  largest  measure  to  my  wife.  Many 
is  the  time  she  gave  up  her  meetings  at  the 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Browning  Club  to  watch  with  me  beside  the 
sick-bed  of  one  of  our  little  ones.  And  she 
would  do  this  so  uncomplainingly,  so  cheer 
fully,  that  it  almost  made  one  oblivious  to  the 
extent  of  her  sacrifice.  There  must  have  been 
occasions,  I  feel  sure,  when  it  cost  her  a  pang 
to  find  her  photograph  omitted  from  the  local 
paper's  account  of  a  club  meeting  or  a  church 
bazaar;  but  if  she  ever  suffered  on  that  score, 
she  never  let  it  be  known.  I  can  truly  say  that, 
without  her,  my  life  work  would  have  spelt 
failure." 


XXIII 
BEHIND  THE  TIMES 

I  HAD  scarcely  exchanged  a  half-dozen  sen 
tences  with  Howard  King  before  we  knew  our 
selves  for  kindred  spirits.  I  was  in  a  roomful 
of  people  who  were  talking  about  new  books 
I  had  not  read,  new  plays  I  had  not  seen,  and 
new  singers  I  had  not  heard,  and  I  was  ex 
ceedingly  lonesome.  There  was  one  youngish 
middle-aged  lady  in  pink,  who  asked  me  what 
was  the  best  novel  I  had  read  of  late,  and  when 
I  said  "  Robert  Elsmere,"  she  looked  at  me 
rather  grimly  and  asked  whether  I  lived  in  New 
York.  When  I  said  yes,  she  turned  away  and 
began  chatting  with  a  young  man  on  her  right, 
who  looked  like  the  advertisement  for  a  new 
linen  collar.  It  was  this  reply  of  mine  that 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

attracted  Howard  King's  attention.  He  had 
been  sitting  in  one  corner  of  the  room  quite  as 
disconsolate  as  I  was.  But  now  he  walked  over 
and  shook  hands  and  told  me  that  in  his  opinion 
"  Robert  Elsmere  "  was  not  so  good  a  book  as 
"Trilby,"  which  he  was  just  reading. 

Howard  King  and  I  belong  to  the  compara 
tively  small  class  of  men  whom  nature,  or  fate, 
or  whatever  you  please,  has  decreed  to  be  al 
ways  a  certain  interval  behind  the  times;  it 
might  be  years  or  months  or  days,  according 
to  the  rate  of  speed  at  which  a  particular  fash 
ion  happened  to  be  moving  forward.  King 
told  me,  for  instance,  that  of  late  he  has  been 
possessed  with  a  passionate  desire  to  learn  the 
game  of  ping-pong.  When  all  the  world  was 
playing  table-tennis  eight  or  ten  years  ago, 
King  viewed  the  game  with  disgust.  He 
thought  it  utterly  childish,  uninteresting,  and 
admirably  illustrative  of  all  the  idiotic  quali- 
228 


BEHIND    THE    TIMES 

ties  that  go  to  make  up  a  fad.  But  for  the 
last  six  months,  King  said,  he  frequently  wakes 
at  night  and  sits  up  in  bed  and  yearns  with  all 
his  soul  for  a  ping-pong  set.  He  was,  of 
course,  ashamed  to  speak  to  others  about  it. 
But  if  he  could  find  some  one  who  shared  his 
feelings  on  the  subject,  he  had  a  large  library 
with  a  square  table  in  it.  Would  I  come  to 
morrow  night?  I  said  I  should  be  very  glad, 
indeed. 

I  told  Howard  King  what  my  attitude  is  to 
ward  clothes.  It  is  my  fate  always  to  grow 
fond  of  a  fashion  just  as  it  is  passing  out.  I 
recalled  the  exaggerated  military  styles  for 
men  that  came  in  with  the  Spanish-American 
and  the  South  African  wars.  Those  enormously 
padded  shoulders  and  tight-shaped  waists  and 
swelling  trouser  legs,  and  the  strut  and  the 
stoop  that  went  with  the  whole  ugly  ensemble, 
roused  my  anger.  My  feelings  remained  un- 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

changed  until  some  time  after  the  Russo-Jap 
anese  War,  and  then  one  day  it  came  to  me 
that  I  must  have  a  suit  of  military  cut.  It 
was  like  the  sudden  awakening  of  the  unre- 
generate  to  grace,  it  was  as  irresistible  as  first 
love.  And  when  the  tailor  said  that  only  slop 
ing  shoulders  were  now  being  worn,  that  what 
I  wanted  was  hopelessly  out  of  date,  the  sense 
of  loss  was  overpowering.  I  confessed  to  King 
that  in  my  opinion  nothing  uglier  in  men's  ap 
parel  was  conceivable  than  the  green  plush  hats 
that  are  just  beginning  to  go  out  of  style. 
And  I  told  him  that  I  was  as  certain  as  I  am 
certain  of  anything  in  this  world  that  some  day 
in  the  very  near  future  I  shall  be  seized  with 
an  uncontrollable  longing  to  wear  a  green  plush 
hat,  and  I  shall  enter  a  shop  and  ask  for  one, 
and  the  man  behind  the  counter  will  look  at  me 
quizzically,  and,  after  a  long  search,  bring  me 
the  only  plush  hat  in  his  shop,  and  I  shall  carry 
230 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

it  home  in  shame,  and  put  it  away  in  my  closet, 
and  mourn  over  the  resolution  that  came  too  late. 
You  must  not  imagine  that  Howard  King 
and  I  are  conservatives.  We  do  not  hold  fast 
to  one  thing,  or  even  hold  fast  to  the  old.  We 
move  forward,  but  at  a  pace  so  curiously  regu 
lated  as  to  bring  us  to  the  front  door  just 
when  most  people  are  leaving  by  the  back.  I 
have  worn  every  shape  of  linen  collar  that  the 
best-dressed  men  have  worn  during  the  last 
fifteen  years ;  but  I  have  worn  them  from  three 
to  six  months  late.  I  became  passionately  fond 
of  bicycling  shortly  after  all  the  bicycle  fac 
tories  began  the  exclusive  production  of  auto 
mobiles.  I  am  not  very  fond  of  automobiles, 
but  I  shall  be,  I  know,  when  aeroplanes  come 
into  extensive  use.  It  is  only  in  the  last  few 
months  that  I  have  discovered  how  amusing  a 
toy  the  Teddy  bear  makes.  And  this  is  true  of 
fashions  in  games  and  of  fashions  in  language. 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

I  have  no  fundamental  objections  to  slang,  but 
I  always  pick  up  the  bit  of  slang  that  most  peo 
ple  are  just  discarding. 

I  recall,  for  instance,  how,  up  in  the  hills 
last  summer,  the  woods  and  glens  were  echoing 
to  the  sound,  half  a  howl  and  half  a  screech, 
of  "  Oh,  you !  "  addressed  at  quarter-minute  in 
tervals  to  every  object,  animate  or  inanimate, 
that  came  within  the  howler's  vision  or  thought. 
This  particular  bit  of  gutter-slang  induced  a 
peculiar  irritation.  It  seemed  to  me  utter  dese 
cration  that  this  quickening  beauty  of  hill  and 
sky  and  river  and  green  woods,  which  should 
have  stirred  young  hearts  to  madrigals  and 
chorals,  should  resound  to  the  blatant,  shriek 
ing  vulgarity  of  Lobster  Square.  I  do  not 
mind  confessing  that  at  times  my  feelings  to 
wards  the  innocent  young  barbarians  bordered 
close  on  murder.  Until — until,  alas !  one  Sep 
tember  morning,  after  all  the  guests  were  gone 


BEHIND   THE    TIMES 

and  I  alone  remained;  that  morning  I  woke 
with  the  poison  in  my  soul,  and  I  walked  down 
to  the  river  for  my  bath,  and,  coming  across 
the  farmer's  herd  of  cows  halfway  down  the 
hillside,  saluted  them,  before  I  knew  what  I  was 
doing,  with  that  horrid,  that  unspeakable — I 
blush  now  to  think  of  it.  When  I  told  Howard 
King,  he  admitted  humbly  that  after  holding 
out  for  years  he  has  just  begun  to  say,  "  It's 
me,"  and  that  he  feels  morally  convinced  that 
within  the  next  year  or  two  he  will  be  saying 
"  Between  you  and  I." 

But  you  must  not  think  that  this  peculiarity 
in  Howard  King  and  myself  is  an  acquired 
habit  or  a  pose  in  which  we  take  any  measure 
of  pride.  Our  attitude  towards  those  happy 
people  who  are  always  in  fashion  is  one  of  sin 
cere  and  profound  envy.  I  think  there  is  noth 
ing  more  wonderful  under  the  sun  than  the  un 
known  force  that  impels  the  great  majority  to 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

begin  doing  the  same  new  thing  at  the  same 
time.  It  must  be  a  precious  gift  to  feel  in 
stinctively  what  the  right  new  thing  is  to  do. 
A  mysterious  fiat  goes  forth  and  a  million 
women  simultaneously  put  on  black  straw  hats 
surmounted  by  a  cock  in  his  pride.  Another 
mysterious  order  goes  forth  and  two  million 
women  simultaneously  begin  reading  the  latest 
novel  by  Robert  W.  Chambers.  Pitiable  are 
those  in  whom  this  instinct  is  wanting  and  who 
must  tag  timidly  behind,  venturing  only  where 
a  million  others  have  gone  before.  Perhaps  it 
is,  with  such  people,  a  case  of  arrested  devel 
opment.  Boys  of  sixteen  and  girls  of  fourteen 
have  supplied  the  poets  with  their  greatest  love 
stories  and  direst  tragedies.  And  there  are 
men  and  women  well  gone  into  middle  age  who 
balk  and  stammer  in  !:he  presence  of  the  most 
elementary  sensation.  Perhaps  at  bottom  it  is 
simply  a  question  of  courage  and  cowardice. 


BEHIND   THE   TIMES 

In  any  case,  being  behind  the  times  is  a  pecu 
liarly  unfortunate  trait  in  a  man,  who,  like  my 
self,  is  condemned  to  earn  his  bread  in  the  sweat 
of  his  fountain-pen.  In  what  other  profession 
must  a  man  be  so  emphatically  up  to  the  min 
ute  as  in  this  scribbling  profession  of  ours? 
Only  yesterday  I  walked  into  an  editor's  office 
and  suggested  a  three-thousand  word  review  of 
"  The  Rise  of  Silas  Lapham,"  which  I  told  him 
was  one  of  the  greatest  novels  in  any  language. 
He  stared  at  me  and  asked  if  I  hadn't  some 
fresher  book  in  mind,  and  I,  somewhat  taken 
aback,  told  him  that  I  was  just  finishing  Frank 
Norris's  "  McTeague "  and  was  about  to  be 
gin  on  Mrs.  Wharton's  "  House  of  Mirth." 
With  a  brutality  characteristic  of  editors  he 
asked  me  whether  I  didn't  care  to  write  a  re 
view  of  Homer's  Iliad  and  the  book  of  Deu 
teronomy.  I  told  him  that  I  might  very  well 
do  so  if  it  were  a  question  of  writing  something 
235 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

he  would  find  personally  instructive,  and  rose 
to  go,  with  the  intention  of  slamming  the  door 
behind  me. 

But  he  called  me  back  and  insisted  that  he 
meant  no  offence,  that  he  simply  must  have 
live,  up-to-date  copy  or  nothing  at  all.  He 
proposed  a  popular  article  on  art,  and  wondered 
if  I  could  write  something  about  the  Dutch 
masters,  with  special  reference  to  the  recent 
notable  exhibition  at  the  Metropolitan  Museum. 
I  was  obliged  to  confess  that  I  had  missed  the 
exhibition  by  two  weeks.  "  Well,"  he  said,  pa 
tiently,  "  there  is  opera.  You  might  do  some 
thing  about  the  singers.  You  have  heard  Mary 
Garden,  of  course  ?  "  I  told  him  no.  Only 
the  other  day  I  had  irrevocably  decided  to  hear 
Mary  Garden  in  "  Thai's  "  next  season ;  and 
the  next  morning  I  learned  that  Mr.  Hammer- 
stein  had  gone  out  of  business. 

He  continued  to  be  patient  with  me. 
236 


BEHIND   THE    TIMES 

"  There's  '  Chantecler,'  to  be  sure,  although 
that  is  ancient  history  by  this  time.  Have  you 
read  the  play?  "  I  had  not,  but  just  here  an 
inspiration  came.  "  You  sneered  at  Homer 
just  now,"  I  said.  "  Well,  there  was  another 
Greek  who  wrote  a  bird  play  2,300  years  before 

Rostand.      I    mean    Aristophanes "      The 

editor  leaped  from  his  chair.  "  Great,  great !  " 
he  cried.  "We'll  call  it  'Chantecler  400 
B.C.'  "  I  caught  the  infection  of  his  enthusi 
asm.  "  And  Aristophanes  had  another  play  on 
woman's  rights,"  I  told  him.  "  You  might  call 
it  '  An  Athenian  Suffragette.'  "  "  Splendid !  " 
he  cried ;  "  splendid ;  we  can  make  a  whole 
series,  and  Goulden  will  do  the  pictures  in  col 
ours.  It's  the  most  novel  thing  I  have  heard 
of  for  a  long  time.  It  will  beat  the  others  by 
a  mile."  And  he  sent  me  away  happy. 


JOT 


XXIV 
PUBLIC  LIARS 

THERE  are  three  things  that  puzzle  me;  yes, 
four  things  that  I  cannot  explain:  Why  street 
clocks  never  show  the  right  time ;  why  thermom 
eters  hanging  outside  of  drug  stores  never  in 
dicate  the  right  temperature;  why  slot  ma 
chines  on  a  railway  platform  never  give  the 
right  weight;  and  why  weather-vanes  always 
point  in  the  wrong  direction.  At  bottom,  I 
imagine,  these  are  really  not  four  things,  but 
one.  For  it  must  be  the  same  mysterious  and 
malicious  principle  that  takes  each  of  these 
contrivances,  set  up  to  be  a  public  guide  to 
truth,  and  turns  it  into  an  instrument  for  the 
dissemination  of  error. 

What  makes  me  think  that  there  is  some  ani- 


PUBLIC  LIARS 

mate  principle  behind  such  clocks  is  that  they 
are  so  like  a  good  many  people  one  meets. 
There  are  persons  who  are  packed  with  the  most 
curiously  inaccurate  information  on  the  most 
abstruse  subjects,  and  they  insist  on  imparting 
it  to  you.  I  have  no  ground  to  complain  if  I 
ask  Jones  what  is  the  capital  of  Illinois  and  he 
says  Chicago.  The  initiative  was  mine,  and 
taken  at  my  own  peril,  and  it  is  fair  that  I 
should  pay  the  penalty.  But  frequently  Jones 
will  break  in  upon  me  in  the  middle  of  a  column 
of  figures  and  tell  me  that  the  largest  ranch  in 
the  world  is  situated  in  the  State  of  Sonora, 
Mexico.  "  Yes  ?  "  I  say,  hoping  that  he  will  go 
away.  "  Yes,"  he  assures  me.  "  It  is  so  large 
that  the  proprietor  can  ride  200  days  on  horse 
back  without  leaving  his  own  grounds.  He  has 
2,000,000  men  working  for  him  and  he  lives  in 
a  marble  palace  of  700  rooms.  No  one  can  be 
elected  President  of  Mexico  against  his  will." 
239 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Now  obviously  it  would  have  been  better  for 
me  to  remain  altogether  unacquainted  with  Mex 
ican  conditions  than  to  share  Jones's  distorted 
view  of  affairs  in  that  interesting  republic. 
But  Jones  insists  on  taking  the  innocent  blank 
spaces  in  my  knowledge  of  the  world  and  filling 
them  up  with  the  most  incorrect  data.  He  tells 
me,  for  instance,  that  Mme.  Finisterra  once 
sang  the  mad  scene  from  "  Lucia  "  before  the 
late  Sultan  of  Morocco,  who  wept  so  bitterly 
that  the  performance  was  interrupted  lest  the 
monarch  should  go  into  convulsions.  At  the 
age  of  eight  Mme.  Finisterra  knew  twelve 
operatic  soprano  roles  by  heart,  and  when  she 
was  ten  she  played  Juliet  to  Tamagno's  Romeo. 
She  now  gets  $10,000  a  night,  in  addition  to 
the  service  of  a  maid,  a  chef,  and  two  private 
secretaries.  In  private  life  she  is  very  stout. 
All  this,  needless  to  say,  is  not  true. 

But  I  must  not  forget  the  clocks.  The 
240 


PUBLIC   LIARS 

worst  of  the  class,  oddly  enough,  are  those 
found  in  front  of  watchmakers'  and  opticians' 
shops.  I  sometimes  think  that  such  clocks  are 
purposely  put  out  of  order  by  the  shop-keeper. 
The  object  is  apparently  to  induce  irascible  old 
gentlemen  to  enter  the  store,  watch  in  hand,  in 
order  to  protest  against  the  maintenance  of  a 
public  nuisance.  It  is  then  a  comparatively 
easy  task  to  sell  them  a  pair  of  solid  gold  spec 
tacles  with  double  lenses  at  a  handsome  profit. 
I,  for  one,  would  not  blame  the  old  gentleman 
who  should  pick  up  a  stone  and  hurl  it  at  one 
of  these  Tartuffes  and  Chadbands  of  the  street- 
corner  with  their  chubby,  gilded  hands  reposing 
on  their  prosperous  stomachs,  sleek  and  smug 
and  ultra-respectable,  but  unconscionable  liars 
for  all  that.  They  are  not  content  with  their 
own  success  in  cheating,  they  throw  discredit 
upon  honest  folk.  How  many  a  faithful 
pocket-piece  has  been  pulled  out  by  its  disap- 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

pointed  owner  and  actually  set  wrong  to  make 
it  agree  with  one  of  these  rubicund  old  sinners? 
Such  is  the  overpowering  effect  of  impudent  as 
surance  on  the  ordinary  man. 

The  difference  between  the  typical  public 
clock  and  a  watch  out  of  order  is  obvious. 
Every  prudent  man  knows  the  peculiarities  of 
his  own  watch,  just  as  he  knows  the  peculiarities 
of  his  own  wife  and  children ;  and  he  is  conse 
quently  prepared  to  make  allowances.  But  the 
clock  on  the  street  corner  persists  in  thrusting 
false  information  upon  you.  The  man  who  con 
sults  his  watch  does  so  with  a  purpose,  and  is 
naturally  on  the  alert.  But  the  cheating  clock 
confronts  him  in  moments  of  unsuspecting  se 
curity,  and  throws  him  into  a  condition  of  the 
wildest  alarm.  It  is  peculiarly  active  on  bright 
spring  days,  when  people  rise  early  and  look 
forward  to  being  at  their  desks  half  an  hour  be 
fore  their  usual  time.  On  such  occasions  they 


PUBLIC  LIARS 

invariably  come  upon  a  clock  which  points  to  a 
quarter  of  ten,  and  sends  them  scurrying 
breathless  up  four  flights  of  stairs,  to  find  the 
janitor  engaged  in  cleaning  out  the  baskets. 

Church  clocks  are  not  so  bad  as  jewellers' 
clocks;  but  they  are  bad  enough,  and,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  we  have  a  right  to  expect  more 
from  a  church  clock  than  from  any  other  kind. 
For  the  same  reason  the  weathercock  on  a 
church  steeple  is  to  be  judged  by  a  higher 
standard  than  the  one  over  a  carpenter's  shop 
or  the  ordinary  dwelling.  I  cannot,  for  in 
stance,  imagine  a  more  dangerous  moral  en 
semble  than  a  church  with  a  clergyman  preach 
ing  bad  doctrine  in  the  pulpit,  a  clock  indicating 
the  wrong  time  on  the  tower,  and,  over  all,  a 
clogged  weather  vane  pointing  to  the  south 
when  the  wind  blows  from  the  east. 

With  reference  to  denominations  I  have  ob 
served  that  Presbyterian  clocks  are  apt  to  be 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

more  reliable  than  any  other  kind,  although  the 
truest  clock  I  have  ever  come  across  is  on  a  lit 
tle  Dutch  Reformed  Church  in  Orange  County. 
One  of  the  most  unprincipled  clocks  I  can  think 
of  is  just  outside  my  window.  I  use  un 
principled  with  intention,  for  this  clock  is  not 
vicious,  but  giddy.  If  it  were  consistently  late 
or  consistently  early,  one  might  get  used  to  it. 
But  to  look  out  of  the  window  at  9 :30  and  find 
this  clock  pointing  to  eleven,  and  to  look  out 
ten  minutes  later  and  find  it  pointing  to  9:35, 
is  extremely  disconcerting.  One  is  inclined  to 
expect  something  more  restrained  in  a  clock  con 
nected  with  the  most  prosperous  parish  of  one 
of  our  most  conservative  denominations. 

What  I  have  said  of  clocks  is  largely  true 
of  the  weighing-machine.  Like  the  public 
clock,  it  thrusts  itself  upon  us,  and  like  the  clock 
it  betrays  the  confidence  which  it  invites.  I  feel 
convinced  that  no  one  would  ever  think  of  using 


PUBLIC   LIARS 

a  weighing-machine  if  it  did  not  constitute  the 
most  characteristically  national  piece  of  furni 
ture  in  our  railway  stations.  All  weighing- 
machines  cheat,  but,  if  cheat  they  must,  give 
me  the  machine  that  flatly  refuses  to  budge  from 
zero  after  it  has  swallowed  your  coin.  I 
prefer  that  kind  to  the  spasmodic  machine  on 
which  the  indicator  moves  forward  one  hundred 
pounds  every  two  minutes  and  leaves  a  person 
utterly  uncertain  as  to  whether  he  should  im 
mediately  begin  dieting  or  purchase  a  bottle  of 
codliver  oil.  Yet  even  this  mockery  of  a  weigh 
ing-machine  is  preferable  to  the  emotional  type 
of  scales  which  simultaneously  gives  you  a  false 
weight,  tells  your  fortune  in  utter  disregard  of 
age  and  sex,  and  plays  a  tune  that  cannot  be 
recognised.  When  such  a  machine  has  regis 
tered  a  German  matron's  weight  at  115  pounds 
and  informed  her  that  she  will  some  day  be 
President  of  the  United  States,  it  is  ludicrous  to 
245 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

have  it  break  into  a  tinkle  of  self-appreciation, 
like  a  spaniel  barking  his  own  approval  after 
walking  across  the  room  on  his  hind  legs. 

As  for  the  ordinary  street  thermometer,  there 
is  this  to  be  said  for  it:  It  may  deceive,  but  it 
gives  pleasure  in  deceiving.  When  a  person  is 
sagging  beneath  the  heat  of  an  August  midday, 
it  is  a  distinct  source  of  comfort  and  pride  to 
have  the  thermometer  register  98  degrees.  Even 
when  we  are  fully  aware  that  the  mercury  is  too 
high  by  three  or  four  degrees,  it  is  easy  enough 
to  make  one's  self  believe  for  the  moment  in  the 
higher  figure.  If  it  were  not  for  this  spiritual 
stimulus,  I  should  be  inclined  to  regard  all  ther 
mometers  as  a  nuisance.  Translating  Fahren 
heit  into  Centigrade  and  vice  versa,  is  one  of 
the  most  painful  mental  processes  I  can  think 
of.  I  know  that  I  cannot  perform  the  opera 
tion,  and  I  cannot  help  trying.  I  remember 
how  a  certain*  European  monarch  once  lay  seri- 
£46 


PUBLIC   LIARS 

ously  ill  and  my  evening  newspaper  reported 
that  his  temperature  was  38.3  degrees  C.  On 
my  way  home  I  attempted  to  put  38.3  degrees 
C.  into  terms  of  F.,  and  it  speaks  well  for  the 
constitution  of  that  European  monarch  that  he 
should  have  survived  the  violent  fluctuations  of 
temperature  to  which  I  subjected  him.  At 
Grand  Central  Station  he  was  literally  burning 
up  under  a  blazing  heat  of  14*2  degrees.  At 
Ninety-sixth  Street  he  was  down  to  74.  As  I 
walked  home  from  the  station  I  was  forced  to 
admit  that  I  was  not  sure  whether  one  should 
multiply  by  five-ninths  or  nine-fifths. 

I  would  not  be  misunderstood.  I  am  no 
enemy  of  the  public  institutions  I  have  criti 
cised.  Far  from  it;  clocks,  thermometers, 
weather-vanes,  and  weighing-machines — they 
are  but  the  remnants  of  the  fine  old  communal 
life  of  which  our  urban  and  Anglo-Saxon  civili 
sation  has  kept  only  too  little.  We  do  not 
247 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

lounge  about  and  take  our  meals  in  the  public 
squares  as  people  used  to  do  in  Athens  and  still 
do  in  Sicily.  We  no  longer  fill  our  pitchers  at 
a  common  fountain  or  dance  on  the  village  green 
or  regulate  the  life  of  an  entire  city  to  the  same 
signal  from  a  campanile.  Ours  is  an  age  of  ex 
aggerated  privacy,  where  every  one  works  be 
hind  closed  doors  and  glances  furtively  at  his 
watch.  But  precisely  because  it  is  a  precious 
survival  the  public  clock  ought  to  keep  itself 
above  reproach  and  above  suspicion. 


248 


XXV 

THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR— III 

COOPER'S  museum  of  Proverbial  Realities  had 
proven  such  a  source  of  delight  to  himself  and 
his  friends  that  the  news  of  its  destruction  by 
fire  came  with  a  shock  to  all  who  knew  him. 
Of  all  his  treasures  he  succeeded  in  saving  only 
part  of  his  priceless  collection  of  straws — the 
straw  that  showed  which  way  the  wind  blew, 
the  straw  grasped  at  by  a  drowning  man,  the 
straw  that  does  not  enter  into  the  manufacture 
of  bricks,  and  the  last  straw  that  broke  the 
camel's  back.  How  would  Cooper  stand  the 
blow,  his  friends  wondered.  He  took  it  very 
well.  Within  a  week  he  had  set  to  work  on  a 
new  fad,  the  collection  of  Statistical  Realities, 
and  in  a  half-year  he  had  filled  three  good- 
249 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

sized  lofts  and  a  large  back-yard  with  his  treas 
ures.  Yesterday  he  took  me  through  his  gal 
leries. 

"  What  do  you  make  of  this  ?  "  he  said,  stop 
ping  before  a  glass  jar  some  four  feet  high,  in 
which,  to  the  peril  of  one's  nerves,  you  could  dis 
tinctly  see  the  upper  two-thirds  of  a  child's 
body.  Head,  trunk,  and  arms  were  beautifully 
fashioned,  but  there  was  no  vestige  of  growth 
below  the  knee-caps.  I  could  only  show  my 
astonishment.  "  Well,"  he  went  on,  "  you  must 
have  seen  the  statement  by  the  president  of 
Bryn  Mawr  that  the  average  number  of  chil 
dren  among  college-bred  mothers  is  3  6-10. 
This  is  the  six-tenths  of  a  child.  Here,"  he 
said,  pointing  to  another  and  somewhat  larger 
jar,  "you  see  three-fifths  of  a  woman;  1  3-5 
women  to  one  man  is  the  ratio  in  some  parts  of 
Ireland.  Here,  in  adjoining  bottles,  are  three- 
tenths  of  a  physician,  seven-eighths  of  a  law- 
250 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — III 

yer,  and  four-fifths  of  a  clergyman,  the  latest 
census  having  shown  that  we  have  23  3-10 
physicians,  29  7-8  lawyers,  and  17  4-5  physi 
cians  for  every  1,000  of  our  population." 

Stopping  before  a  glass  case  containing  lit 
tle  heaps  of  ordinary  copper  coins,  Harrington 
pointed  out  that  these  were  the  odd  cents  which 
the  scrupulous  science  of  statistics  insists  on 
leaving  attached  to  vast  sums  of  money.  He 
showed  me  the  27  cents  which,  added  to  $3,- 
469,746,854  represented  the  value  of  the  for 
eign  commerce  of  the  United  States  in  1910; 
he  showed  me  the  twopence  ha'penny  which,  in 
creased  by  £788,990,187,  constitutes  the  total 
funded  debt  of  Great  Britain;  and  he  laid  spe 
cial  emphasis  on  the  eleven  pennies  which  Tam 
many's  most  vigorous  efforts  at  economy  could 
not  pare  off  from  New  York  City's  budget  of 
$166,246,729.11  for  the  year  1909. 

Another  row  of  glass  cases  contained  what 
251 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

appeared  at  first  sight  a  collection  of  comic 
dolls.  Cooper  pointed  to  a  sturdy  little  man- 
nikin  in  boots  and  a  Russian  blouse,  who,  with 
mouth  fearfully  distended,  was  endeavouring  to 
swallow  an  iron  bar  four  or  five  times  his  own 
size.  "  You  may  have  read,"  said  Cooper, 
"  that  the  annual  consumption  of  pig-iron  in 
Russia  is  3.7  tons  per  capita.  This  figure 
shows  the  fact  concretely.  Here,"  indicating 
the  figure  of  an  infant  apparently  a  week  or 
two  old,  "  is  a  French  baby.  You  may  observe 
that  she  is  engaged  in  counting  her  share  of 
the  national  wealth,  which  is  estimated  in 
France  at  1,254  francs  63  centimes  for  every 
man,  woman,  and  child.  She  is  wondering 
whether  she  ought  to  invest  her  capital  in  Rus 
sian  treasury  bonds  or  in  Steel  Common.  This," 
pointing  to  a  group  of  seven  or  eight  dolls  rid 
ing  on  a  perfectly  modelled  brindled  cow, 
"represents  the  proportions  of  domesticated 
252 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — III 

cattle  to   the  total  population   of  the  United 
States." 

The  fire  which  flashes  up  in  the  eye  of  every 
amateur  when  he  contemplates  the  gem  of  his 
collection,  was  visible  as  Cooper  led  the  way  to 
a  good-sized  platform  of  polished  mahogany 
and  brass  on  which  was  set  up  what  I  took 
to  be  a  beautiful  reproduction  of  the  planetary 
system  in  miniature.  I  was  right.  "  But  ob 
serve,"  said  Cooper,  "  the  details  of  construc 
tion.  The  sun  is  made  up  of  infinitely  small 
eggs,  since  we  know  that  the  weight  of  all 
the  hen's  eggs  consumed  by  the  human  race  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Christian  era  is  equal  to 
one-billionth  the  weight  of  the  sun.  The  planets 
are  fashioned  in  the  same  way.  Jupiter  you  see 
is  made  up  of  little,  squirming  animal-like  units ; 
that  is  because  Jupiter  occupies  the  same 
amount  of  space  that  would  be  filled  by  the  de 
scendants  of  a  single  pair  of  Australian  rabbits 
253 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

in  five  hundred  years,  if  left  unchecked.  Ob 
serve  the  orbit  of  the  earth.  It  is  marked  out 
in  twopenny  postage  stamps,  for  statisticians 
assure  us  that  the  path  of  the  earth  around  the 
sun  is  equivalent  in  length  to  all  the  postage 
stamps  consumed  since  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  if  laid  end  to  end.  In  the 
same  way  the  seven  rings  of  Saturn  are  made  up 
of  copper  pennies,  obtained  by  reducing  the 
world's  annual  output  of  gold  to  coins  of  that 
denomination." 

We  passed  into  a  cosy  little  alcove  lined  to 
the  ceiling  with  books.  There  seemed  nothing 
out  of  the  ordinary  about  them  at  first  sight, 
but  my  host  soon  undeceived  me.  "  These,"  he 
said,  "  are  the  books  that  might  have  been  writ 
ten  in  the  last  hundred  years,  if  the  time  and 
energy  that  are  spent  on  smoking,  drinking, 
whist,  bridge,  and  out-door  games  were  devoted 
to  the  cultivation  of  literature.  Here,  for  in- 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  —  HI 

stance,  are  three  plays  quite  as  good  as  '  Ham 
let,'  written  by  two  million  men  named  Smith, 
who  gave  up  the  use  of  tobacco.  Here  is  a 
philosophical  poem  which  shows  on  every  page 
an  inspiration  higher  than  Goethe  ever  attained ; 
it  embodies  the  concentrated  ideas  produced  by 
twenty-five  thousand  former  golf  players, 
thinking  half  an  hour  a  day  for  three  days  in 
the  week.  Here  is  a  poetic  version  of  the  fu 
ture  life  which  completely  outclasses  the 
'  Divina  Commedia.'  It  is  compounded  out  of 
the  experiences  of  forty-three  thousand  mod 
erate  drinkers  who  became  total  abstainers, 
seventy  disbanded  croquet  associations,  and 
1,135  obsolete  euchre  clubs. 

"  Perhaps,"  concluded  Cooper,  "  you  should 
see  this  before  you  go,"  and  he  pointed  to  a 
single  shelf  of  books  with  a  curious  mechanical 
arrangement  at  one  side.  "  This  shelf,"  he 
said,  "  is  exactly  five  feet  long.  This  little 
355 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

electric  motor  at  the  side  is  so  constructed  that 
it  gets  into  motion  every  day  for  twenty  min 
utes,  and  stops.  By  a  system  of  cogs  and 
levers  the  motor  propels  a  fine  steel  needle 
straight  through  the  five  feet  of  books.  A 
glance  at  this  brass  dial  shows  at  once  how  far 
the  needle  point  has  reached.  At  the  present 
moment,  for  instance,  it  is  halfway  through  the 
front  cover  of  the  '  Journal  of  John  Woolman.' 
And  while  the  dial  is  recording  the  distance  cov 
ered  on  the  five- foot  shelf,  the  blue  liquid  in  this 
glass  tube  measures  the  rising  level  of  culture. 
It  is  a  very  ingenious  application  of  President 
Eliot's  idea,,  don't  you  think?  " 


XXVI 

THE  COMMUTER 

WHENEVEB  Harrington  urges  me  to  go  to 
live  in  the  country,  his  place  is  only  forty- 
three  minutes  from  City  Hall.  But  when  he 
asked  me  last  week  to  spend  Saturday  after 
noon  with  him,  he  told  me  that  some  trains 
are  slower  than  others  and  that  I  had  better 
allow  ten  minutes  for  the  ferry.  I  have  never 
known  a  commuter  who  told  the  truth  about 
the  time  it  takes  him  to  cover  the  distance  from 
his  office-door  to  his  front  lawn.  If  he  is  ex 
ceptionally  conscientious  he  will  take  into  ac 
count  the  preliminary  ride  on  the  Subway  and 
possibly  even  the  walk  from  his  office  to  the 
Subway  station.  But  no  commuter  ever  al 
ludes  to  the  fifteen  minutes'  walk  at  the  other 
257 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

end.  I  did  know  one  man  who  never  under 
estimated  the  length  of  his  daily  trips,  but  he 
was  a  cynic  who  hated  the  country  and  lived 
there  because  his  wife's  mother  owned  the 
house,  and  he  multiplied  by  two  the  time  it 
really  took  him  to  get  into  town.  The  exact 
truth  I  have  never  had. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  sitting  there  in  a  rather 
stuffy  car  which  made  its  way  through  much 
unlovely  landscape,  I  reflected  that  there  are 
really  three  different  schedules  on  which  sub 
urban  traffic  is  conducted.  One  is  the  time 
it  takes  a  commuter's  friends  to  come  out  to 
see  him.  Another  is  the  time  he  claims  it  takes 
him  to  come  into  town  every  day.  The  third, 
and  incomparably  the  shortest  of  the  three, 
is  the  time  your  friend  says  it  will  take  him 
to  come  into  town  after  the  completion  of  some 
very  extensive  railway  improvements  which,  in 
practice,  I  have  found  are  never  completed.  I 
258 


THE   COMMUTER 

am  quite  aware  that  great  bridges  have  been 
built,  and  that  railway  tunnels  have  been 
opened  into  Long  Island  and  other  railway 
tunnels  into  New  Jersey,  and  that  steam  is  be 
ing  rapidly  replaced  by  electricity.  But  it  is 
my  firm  belief  that  such  of  my  suburban  friends 
as  live  within  the  zone  affected  by  these  im 
provements  will  move  away  before  the  change 
for  the  better  actually  comes.  I  am  no  pessi 
mist.  I  base  this  expectation  on  the  simple 
fact  that  every  commuter  I  know,  for  as  long 
a  period  as  I  have  known  him,  has  been  looking 
forward  to  the  completion  of  railway  improve 
ments  involving  the  expenditure  of  tens  of  mil 
lions  of  dollars.  The  march  of  progress  ap 
parently  finds  the  suburban  resident  always 
a  little  in  advance. 

Harrington  met  me  at  the  station  and  asked 
me  if  that  was  not  a  very  good  train  I  had 
come  down  on.    The  suburban  virus  was  in  me. 
£59 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

I  lied  and  said  yes.  As  we  sat  at  our  luncheon 
I  felt  how  peculiarly  a  vital  factor  in  out-of- 
town  existence  the  railroad  constitutes.  Both 
Harrington  and  his  wife  spoke  of  trains  as  of 
living,  breathing  people.  Some  trains,  with  all 
their  faults,  the  Harringtons  evidently  loved. 
Others  they  detested,  and  made  no  attempt  to 
conceal  the  fact.  I  had  just  finished  telling 
Mrs.  Harrington  about  the  latest  woman's 
suffrage  parade  when  Harrington  said :  "  Do 
you  know,  my  dear,  the  8.13  is  getting  worse 
all  the  time."  I  was  still  thinking  of  my  own 
story,  and  I  failed  to  catch  just  who  or  what 
it  was  that  was  getting  worse  all  the  time  to 
an  extent  so  inimical  to  Harrington's  peace  of 
mind.  But  Mrs.  Harrington  looked  up,  frown 
ing  slightly,  and  said :  "  Can't  anything  be 
done?"  Harrington  shook  his  head.  "It's 
hopeless."  By  this  time  I  was  convinced  that 
it  must  be  some  family  skeleton  that  Harring- 
260 


THE   COMMUTER 

ton  hack  rather  oddly  chosen  to  bring  out  be 
fore  a  stranger ;  some  scapegrace  cousin,  I  sus 
pected,  who  probably  got  drunk  and  came  to 
Harrington's  office  and  demanded  money.  I 
looked  discreetly  into  my  plate  as  Mrs.  Har 
rington  suggested :  "  You  might  write  to  the 
superintendent."  "  We  have,"  replied  Harring 
ton,  "and  he  threatened  to  take  it  off  alto 
gether.  Not  that  it  would  mean  any  loss.  I 
can  make  just  as  good  time  now  by  the  8 :35." 

After  luncheon  we  walked.  I  have  never 
found  the  walking  in  the  suburbs  very  good. 
There  is  a  regrettable  lack  of  elbow-room.  A 
short  stroll  brings  one  either  to  a  railway- 
siding,  which  is  bad  enough,  or  to  a  promising 
growth  of  trees,  which  is  worse.  From  the  road 
these  trees  look  like  the  beginning  of  a  prime 
val  jungle  sweeping  on  to  far  horizons.  Plunge 
into  that  timber  growth  and  in  five  minutes  you 
emerge  on  a  sewered  road  with  concrete  side- 
261 


THE  PATIENT  OBSERVER 

walks  and  ornamental  lamp  posts  and  a  crew  of 
Italian  labourers  drinking  beer  in  the  shadow 
of  a  steam-roller.  It  is  a  gash  of  civilisation 
across  the  face  of  the  wilderness,  and,  like  most 
deformities,  it  is  displeasing  to  the  eye.  Walk 
ing  under  such  conditions  is  not  stimulative. 
I  miss  the  sense  of  space  and  freedom  I  get  in 
the  streets  of  New  York,  where  I  know  that  I 
can  walk  twenty  miles  north  or  twenty  miles 
east  without  interference  or  inconvenience. 
Give  me  either  a  mountain-top  or  Broadway. 
Suburban  vistas  are  pitifully  cramped. 

That  day  it  had  rained,  and  I  should  have 
been  additionally  glad  to  stay  indoors.  But 
Mrs.  Harrington  is  a  fervent  naturalist,  and 
she  insisted  on  taking  me  out  to  look  at  the 
wild  flowers  and  listen  to  the  bird-calls.  Both 
of  these  branches  of  nature-study,  I  am  con 
vinced,  call  for  an  intensity  of  sympathetic 
imagination  that  I  am  incapable  of  developing ; 
262 


THE   COMMUTER 

and  especially  the  bird-calls.  Concerning  the 
latter,  I  feel  sure  that  a  great  deal  of  humbug 
is  being  said  and  written.  I  mean  to  cast  no 
reflections  upon  Harrington  or  his  wife.  The 
only  occasions  on  which  I  have  known  Harring 
ton  to  deviate  from  the  truth  have  been,  as  I 
have  already  pointed  out,  in  connection  with  his 
train-schedules.  And  as  Mrs.  Harrington  does 
not  travel  to  the  city,  even  this  charge  will  not 
hold  against  her.  And  yet  I  cannot  help  feel 
ing  that  neither  of  the  two  really  hears  the 
catbird  say  "  miaow  "  or  the  robin  "  cheer  up," 
as  they  pretend  to.  At  the  first  twitter  or  chirp 
from  some  invisible  source  Mrs.  Harrington 
stops  and  with  radiant  face  asks  me  whether  I 
do  not  distinctly  catch  the  "  pit-pit-pity-me  " 
of  the  meadow-lark.  I  say  yes;  but  I  really 
don't,  and  I  don't  believe  she  does.  My  ex 
planation  is  that  Mrs.  Harrington  is  a  woman 
and  consequently  ready  to  hear  what  she  has 
263 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

been  led  to   expect   she  would  hear.     As   for 
Harrington,  he  is  a  devoted  husband. 

For  let  us  look  at  the  matter  with  an  open 
mind.  Our  alphabetical  representations  of  ani 
mal  sounds  are  at  best  only  rough  approxima 
tions.  Most  often  they  are  not  even  that. 
They  are  mere  arbitrary  symbols.  We  use  con 
sonants  where  the  bird  uses  none,  as  when  we 
give  the  name  cuckoo  to  a  bird  whose  cry  is 
really  "  ooh,  ooh."  Or  else  we  put  in  the  wrong 
consonants,  which  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
different  nations  assign  different  consonantal 
sounds  to  the  same  bird.  We  do  not  even  agree 
on  the  vowel  sounds.  What  is  there  in  common 
between  our  English  "  Cock-a-doodle-doo  "  and 
M.  Rostand's  "  cocorico  "?  And  we  need  not 
go  as  far  as  the  animal  world.  See  how  the 
nations  differ  in  spelling  out  that  elementary 
human  sound  which  is  the  expression  of  pain 
or  surprise,  and  which  in  this  country  we  hear 
264 


THE    COMMUTER 

as  "  Oh,"  and  the  Germans  hear  as  "  Ach,"  and 
the  Greeks  heard  as  "  Ai,  Ai."  If  the  human 
vocal  chords  can  be  so  imperfectly  imitated, 
what  shall  we  say  of  birds  speaking  after  a 
manner  all  their  own?  For  myself  I  confess 
that  in  congenial  company  I  can  hear  birds 
say  anything,  but  that  left  to  myself  I  am 
sometimes  puzzled  by  a  parrot.  And  that  is 
the  reason  why  I  am  sceptical  concerning  Mrs. 
Harrington's  accomplishments  in  this  field. 

But  while  the  birds  about  the  Harringtons' 
home  simply  offend  my  regard  for  the  truth, 
the  Harringtons'  dog  causes  me  acute  bodily 
and  mental  discomfort.  He  is  of  a  spotted 
white,  with  a  disreputable  black  patch  over  one 
eye,  and  weighs,  I  should  imagine,  between 
eighty  and  ninety  pounds.  During  luncheon 
he  takes  his  place  under  the  table,  and  from 
there  emits  blood-curdling  howls  with  sufficient 
frequency  to  make  conversation  extremely  diffi- 
265 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

cult.  This  he  varies  by  nosing  about  the  vis 
itor's  legs  and  growling.  I  am  not  fond  of 
dogs  under  the  best  of  circumstances.  I  al 
ways  labour  under  the  presumption  that  they 
will  bite.  Their  habit  of  suddenly  dashing 
across  the  floor,  in  furious  pursuit  of  nothing 
in  particular,  upsets  me.  But  an  invisible  dog 
under  a  dining-room  table  is  a  dreadful  expe 
rience.  It  is  true  that  I  managed  to  give  Mrs. 
Harrington  a  fairly  rational  account  of  the 
woman's  suffrage  parade.  But  was  she  aware, 
as  I  sat  there  smiling  spasmodically,  what 
agonies  of  fear  were  mine  as  I  waited  for  those 
white  fangs  under  the  table  to  sink  into  my 
flesh?  If,  under  the  circumstances,  I  confused 
Harriet  Beecher  Stowe  with  Julia  Ward  Howe, 
and  made  a  bad  blunder  about  woman's  rights 
in  Finland,  am  I  so  very  much  to  blame? 

Not  that  the  Harringtons  are  the  worst  of 
fenders  in  this  respect.     There  is  an  old  class- 
266 


THE   COMMUTER 

mate,  and  a  very  dear  friend,  indeed,  who  lives 
on  Flushing  Bay,  and  has  a  pair  of  hopelessly 
ferocious  dogs  that  hold  the  neighbourhood  in 
terror.  The  only  occasion  on  which  they  have 
been  known  to  show  indifference  to  strangers* 
was  one  night  when  burglars  broke  in  and  stole 
some  silver  and  a  revolver.  When  I  go  out  to 
Flushing,  I  stipulate  that  the  dogs  shall  be 
locked  up  in  the  cellar  from  ten  minutes  before 
my  train  is  due  until  ten  minutes  after  I  have 
left  the  house.  But  it  would  be  foolhardy  to 
omit  additional  precautions.  Hence  I  always 
carry  an  umbrella  with  the  ferrule  sharpened 
to  a  point,  and  when  I  am  within  a  block  of 
the  house  I  stoop  and  pick  up  a  large  stone, 
and  go  on  my  way,  with  all  my  senses  acute, 
whistling  cheerfully.  It  is  odd  how  people  will 
put  themselves  out  to  keep  a  harmless,  poor 
relation  out  of  the  way  of  visitors,  and  never 
think  of  the  much  greater  discomfort  attendant 
267 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

upon  the  constant  presence  of  an  active  bull- 
terrier. 

I  may  have  produced  the  impression  that  life 
in  the  country  makes  no  appeal  to  me.  Noth 
ing  could  be  further  from  my  intentions.  What 
ever  doubts  I  may  have  entertained  on  this 
point  vanish  completely  as  the  Harringtons 
escort  me  to  the  station  in  the  cool  of  the  even 
ing,  the  dog  having  been  left  at  home  at  my 
request.  We  pass  by  low,  white-pillared  houses 
behind  hedges,  and  the  scent  of  hay  comes  up 
from  the  lawns,  and  laughter  comes  from  the 
dark  of  the  verandas.  The  city  at  such  a  time 
seems  a  very  undesirable  place  to  return  to;  a 
place  to  lose  one's  self  in — yes,  and  that  is  all. 
The  Harringtons  never  were  in  the  city  what 
they  are  here.  They  have  taken  root,  they  have 
developed  local  pride  which  is  only  the  sense 
of  home.  As  we  walk  they  point  out  the  resi 
dences  of  the  leading  citizens.  Here  lives  the 
268 


THE    COMMUTER 

owner  of  one  of  the  largest  factories  of  me 
chanical  pianos  in  the  country.  This  Japanese 
temple  belongs  to  a  man  who  writes  for  some 
of  the  best-known  magazines.  That  colonial 
dwelling  is  occupied  by  the  lawyer  who  defended 
Mrs.  Dower  when  she  was  tried  for  poisoning 
her  husband.  I  reflect,  in  genuine  humility, 
that  in  the  city  I  never  think  of  taking 
strangers  to  see  Mr.  William  Dean  Howells's 
house  or  Mr.  Joseph  H.  Choate's.  And  with 
real  regret  and  admiration,  I  say  good-night  to 
the  Harringtons. 


269 


XXVII 
HEADLINES 

AFTER  Stephane  Dubost,  editor  of  the  Paris 
Reveil,  had  been  ten  days  in  this  country,  and 
had  collected  all  his  material  for  a  series  of 
volumes  on  the  American  Woman,  Yankee  and 
Yellow  Peril,  Democracy  Decollete,  and  Foot 
ball  versus  the  Fine  Arts — to  name  only  a  few 
— he  was  asked  what  single  feature  of  our  life 
had  impressed  him  as  most  characteristically 
American.  He  replied,  "  The  headlines  in  your 
daily  press."  Just  what  M.  Dubost  did  think 
of  our  achievements  in  that  department  of  jour 
nalism  may  be  gathered  from  a  letter  he  ad 
dressed  the  very  same  day  to  his  friend,  Marcel 
Complans,  director  of  the  Bureau  of  Cipher 
Codes  in  the  Ministry  of  Foreign  Affairs: 
270 


HEADLINES 

"  In  nothing,  my  dear  Marcel,  is  the  Ameri 
can  genius  for  saving  time  so  strikingly  exem 
plified  as  in  their  newspaper  headlines.  Think 
of  our  Figaro  or  Temps  with  its  dreary 
columns  of  solid  type  introduced  by  a  minute 
solitary  heading,  and  then  pick  up  one  of  Uncle 
Sam's  great  dailies.  It  may  be  only  an  item  of 
four  or  five  inches,  what  they  call  here  a  stick 
ful  or  two,  but  are  you  left  to  make  your  way 
unassisted  through  the  brief  account?  No. 
Your  eye  immediately  catches  a  time-saving 
headline  like  this : 

DESERTED    GIRL    WIFE 

TO   HOLD    UP   MAN. 

Having  that  concise  legend  before  you,  all  you 
need  to  do,  my  dear  Marcel,  is  simply  to  decide 
for  yourself  whether  our  story  deals  with  an 
unscrupulous  wretch  who  abandons  his  young 
wife  to  engage  on  a  career  of  highway  robbery ; 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

or  whether  it  is  the  history  of  a  deserted  girl 
who  becomes  the  wife  of  a  professional  outlaw ; 
or  whether  it  is  a  betrayed  young  wife  who  gives 
herself  up  to  the  cause  of  elevating  the  human 
race.  A  French  reader,  under  the  circum 
stances,  would  be  compelled  to  go  through  as 
much  as  thirty  or  forty  lines  of  small  print 
before  he  secured  the  desired  information.  Thus 
it  requires  but  a  brief  experience  with  Ameri 
can  headlines  to  recognise  that  when  the  Chi 
cago  Evening  Post  says 

FINDS    ENGLISH    FOOD 
FOR  LAND  TAX  FAITH 

it  means  that  an  American  single-taxer,  who 
has  just  returned  from  Great  Britain,  believes 
that  the  English  people  is  ready  to  listen  to 
the  principles  of  the  single-tax  theory.  And 
when  the  New  York  Sim  says 

LA  FOLLETTE  TALKING  BOLT 


HEADLINES 

it  does  not  mean  that  the  Senator  from  Wis 
consin  is  a  manifestation  of  crashing,  celestial 
eloquence,  but  that  he  is  advocating  a  secession 
from  the  Republican  party.  Can  you  not  see, 
my  friend,  what  magnificent  economies  of  time 
are  effected  by  headlines  like 

WATCH    SPRINGS    TRAP 

FOB    JAPANESE   SPY 

over  a  story  dealing  with  the  capture  of  an 
Oriental  suspect  by  a  sentinel  at  one  of  the 
Pacific  Coast  forts,  or 

SCREAMING  FRIARS  TORTURED 
CHILD    MOTHER    FAINTS 

which  does  not  mean  that  a  society  of  howling 
friars  have  been  guilty  of  an  atrocious  crime 
upon  an  infant  in  the  presence  of  its  mother; 
or  that  a  band  of  religionists  are  driven  by  tor 
ture  to  cries  of  pain,  while  a  young  mother 
faints  at  the  sight.  It  only  means  that  a  poor 
273 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

mother,  who  has  suddenly  gone  insane,  breaks 
into  a  house  of  refuge,  where  her  little  boy  is 
being  cared  for  by  a  religious  fraternity,  ac 
cuses,  without  warrant,  the  brothers  of  tortur 
ing  her  child,  and  faints.  Or  take 

FRENCH    RACE    WORN    OUT 

ENGLISH    TO    TRIUMPH. 

These  lines  are  not  the  summary  of  a  study  in 
national  growth  and  decay,  but  expressive  of 
the  fact  that  a  French  bicycle  team  wins  a 
signal  victory  over  a  group  of  exhausted  Eng 
lish  competitors.  Do  you  see  now  how  far  to 
wards  the  art  of  simplified  story-telling  these 
Americans  have  gone? 

"  I  can  only  express  my  profound  admira 
tion,  as  I  pass,  for  the  genius  of  those  men 
who  almost  automatically  will  dig  the  heart  out 
of  a  "  story,"  and  blazon  it  before  the  reader 
not  only  with  marvellous  brevity  and  meaning, 
274 


HEADLINES 

but  with  extraordinary  appropriateness  of  char 
acterisation.  Can  you  seize,  for  instance,  the 
full  relevancy  of  a  headline  like 

PRESBYTERIAN    FALLS 

TWENTY   FEET 

or, 

PROFESSOR    THRICE    MARRIED 

DENIES  AUTHENTICITY  OF  BIBLE 

or  see  how  the  essential  point  is  caught  when  a 
"  head  "  writer  places 

FLORODORA  GIRL  EXPELLED 
FROM  CZAR'S  CAPITAL 

over  an  account  of  the  latest  ukase  which  ban 
ishes  from  St.  Petersburg  two  hundred  mem 
bers  of  the  Duma,  twelve  professors,  fifty-five 
Jewish  bankers  and  artists,  all  the  labour  dele 
gates,  as  well  as  the  agent  of  the  American 
Plough  Corporation,  whose  wife  was  one  of  the 
original  sextette? 

275 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  I  will  conclude  with  what  to  me  is  an  ex 
ample  of  the  art  of  headline  writing  carried 
almost  to  perfection.  Suppose  that  at  Paris 
a  long-distance  foot-race  between  one  of  our 
countrymen  and  a  foreign  athlete  had  been 
won  by  our  compatriot.  The  Rfoeil  would 
probably  say,  <  Armand  Wins  at  Auteuil,'  and 
go  on  to  give  the  details.  But  observe  what 
they  do  here.  I  cite  the  article  complete,  head 
line  and  text: 

HAYES  WINS 

VICTOR  IN  DUAL  MATCH  OVEE  DOEANDO 
AMEEICAN  LEADS  ITALIAN  TO  THE  TAPE, 

AND    CAEEIES    OFF    PEIZE 

DOEANDO  CAN  DO  NOTHING  BETTEE  THAN 
SECOND 

ONE   MOEE    VICTOEY   ADDED    TO    GEEAT 
EUNNEE'S  STEING 

276 


HEADLINES 

TEN  THOUSAND  CHEERING  SPECTATORS 
SEE  THE  AMERICAN  RUNNER  REPEAT 
HIS  VICTORY  AT  THE  OLYMPIC  GAMES 

"New  York,  November  26.— The 
race  between  Hayes  and  Dorando  this 
afternoon  was  won  by  the  former." 


277 


XXVIII 
USAGE 

.  .  .  a  certain  class  of  verbal  critics  who  can 
never  free  themselves  from  the  impression  that 
man  was  made  for  language  and  not  language 
for  man. — Professor  Lounsbury. 

From  a  large  number  of  readers  we  have 
received  requests  for  a  ruling  on  disputed  cases 
of  English  usage.  We  now  proceed  to  answer 
these  inquiries  in  accordance  with  the  liberal 
standard  for  which  Professor  Lounsbury 
pleads.  One  man  writes : 

Question:  Which  is  right,  "  To-morrow  is 
Sunday  and  we  are  going  out,"  or  "  To-morrow 
will  be  Sunday  and  we  shall  go  out?  "  Answer: 
Both  forms  are  right,  but  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
if  to-morrow  is  like  other  Sundays,  it  will  prob- 
278 


USAGE 

ably  rain  all  day,  and  your  chances  of  going 
out  are  not  bright. 

Q.  Must  a  sentence  always  have  coherence? 
What  is  the  practice  of  our  great  writers  on 
this  point?  A.  Coherence  is  not  essential. 
Thus :  "  Conquests !  Thousands  !  Don  Bolaro 
Fizzgig  —  Grandee  —  only  daughter  —  Donna 
Christina — Splendid  creature — loved  me  to  dis 
traction — jealous  father — high-souled  daugh 
ter — handsome  Englishman — Donna  Christina 
in  despair — prussic  acid — stomach  pump  in  my 
portmanteau — operation  performed — old  Bo 
laro  in  ecstasies — consent  to  our  union — join 
hands  and  floods  of  tears — romantic  story — 
very."  (Charles  Dickens.) 

Q.  Must  a  sentence  always  have  a  predicate? 
A.  No.  For  example:  (1)  "The  Universe 
smiles  to  me.  The  World  smiles  to  me.  Every 
thing.  Man.  Woman.  Children.  Presidential 
Candidates.  Trolley  Cars.  Everything  smiles 
279 


THE   PATIENT  OBSERVER 

to  me."  (The  Complete  Whitmanite) 
"  From  the  frowning  tower  of  Babel  on  which 
the  insectile  impotence  of  man  dared  to  contend 
with  the  awful  wrath  of  the  Almighty,  through 
the  granite  bulk  of  the  beetling  Pyramids  lift 
ing  their  audacious  crests  to  the  star-meshed 
skies  that  bend  down  to  kiss  the  blue  waters 
of  Father  Nile  and  the  gracious  nymphs  laving 
their  blithesome  limbs  in  the  pools  that  stud 
the  sides  of  Pentelicus,  down  to  our  own  Wash 
ington,  throned  like  an  empress  on  the  banks  of 
the  beautiful  Potomac,  waiting  for  the  end 
which  we  trust  may  never  come."  (From  the 
Congressional  Record.) 

Q.  Is  "  ivrybody  "  a  permissible  variant  for 
"everybody"?  A.  It  is.  For  instance,  "His 
dinners  [our  ambassador's  at  St.  Petersburg] 
were  th'  most  sumchuse  ever  known  in  that 
ancient  capital ;  th'  carredge  of  state  that  bore 
him  fr'm  his  stately  palace  to  th'  comparatively 
280 


USAGE 

squalid  quarters  of  th'  Czar  was  such  that  wry- 
body  expicted  to  hear  th'  sthrains  iv  a  calliope 
burst  fr'm  it  at  anny  moment."  (Mr.  Dooley.) 

Q.  Is  there  good  authority  for  saying,  "  He 
was  given  a  hat,"  "  He  was  shown  the  door," 
etc.?  A.  The  form  is  common,  and  therefore 
correct.  As,  "The  Senator  was  paid  twenty 
thousand  dollars  for  voting  against  the  Gov 
ernor  " ;  "  He  was  offered  a  third  term,  but  de 
clined  " ;  "  The  coloured  delegates  were  handed 
a  lemon."  (From  the  contemporary  press.) 

Q.  The  use  of  "  who  "  and  "  whom  "  puzzles 
me.  Must  "  who  "  always  be  used  in  the  nom 
inative  case  and  "  whom  "  in  the  objective?  A. 
Not  necessarily.  Thus,  "  I  told  him  who  I 
wanted  to  see  and  that  it  wasn't  none  of  his 
business  "  (W.  S.  Devery) ;  "  That's  the  first 
guy  whom  he  said  put  him  into  the  cooler." 
(Battery  Dan  Finn.) 

Q.  I  am  told  that  it  is  wrong  to  place  a 
281 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

preposition  at  the  end  of  a  sentence.  Why 
can't  I  say,  "  Mr.  Roosevelt  is  a  man  whom  I 
should  enjoy  talking  with  "?  A.  Your  example 
is  unfortunate.  You  should  say,  "  Mr.  Roose 
velt  is  a  man  whom  I  should  enjoy  talking 
offer." 

Q.  Is  it  wrong  to  split  infinitives  ?  Is  a  phrase 
like  "  to  seriously  complain  "  really  ob j  ection- 
able?  A.  We  hasten  to  most  emphatically  say 
"  Yes ! " 

Q.  Is  there  a  rigid  rule  with  regard  to  the 
use  of  the  preterite  tense?  When  do  you  say 
"  hung  "  and  when  do  you  say  "  hanged"?  A. 
Two  examples  from  a  universally  recognised 
authority  will  illustrate  the  flexibility  of  our 
language  in  the  general  use  of  tenses:  (1)  "  '  I 
know  a  gen'l'man,  sir,'  said  Mr.  Weller,  '  as  did 
that,  and  begun  at  two  yards;  but  he  never 
tried  it  on  ag'in ;  for  he  blowed  the  bird  right 
clean  away  at  the  first  fire,  and  nobody  ever 
282 


USAGE 

seed  a  feather  on  him  arterwards.'  "  (2)  "  So 
I  take  the  privilidge  of  the  day,  Mary,  my  dear 
— as  the  gen'lem'n  in  difficulties  did,  ven  he 
valked  out  of  a  Sunday — to  tell  you  that  the 
first  and  only  time  I  see  you  your  likeness  was 
tool;  on  my  hart  in  much  quicker  time  and 
brighter  colours  than  ever  a  likeness  was  took 
by  the  pro  feel  macheens  (wich  p'r'aps  you  may 
have  heerd  on  Mary  my  dear)  altho  it  does 
finish  a  portrait  and  put  the  frame  and  glass 
on  complete  with  a  hook  at  the  end  to  hang  it 
up  by  and  all  in  two  minutes  and  a  quarter." 
(Charles  Dickens.) 

Q.  What  is  "  elegance  "  in  style?  I  know  it 
does  not  mean  long  words  and  many  of  them; 
but  just  what  does  it  mean?  A.  Elegance  is  ap 
propriateness.  Long  and  circumlocutory  terms 
are  just  as  elegant  in  the  mouth  of  a  fashion 
able  preacher  as  shorter  and  uglier  words  in 
the  mouth  of  some  one  else.  Hamlet's  "  Angels 
283 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

and  ministers  of  grace  defend  us ! "  and  Chuck 
Connors's  "  Wouldn't  it  bend  your  Merry 
Widow  ?  "  are  equally  elegant. 

Q.  What  is  force  in  style?  A.  We  may  illus 
trate  with  a  quotation  from  Hall  Caine's  un 
announced  book :  "  He  drew  her  to  him  and 
kissed  her  as  men  and  women  have  kissed 
through  the  aeons,  since  the  first  star  hymned 
to  the  first  moonrise."  Now,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  kissing  is  only  about  two  thousand  years 
old,  and  is  still  unknown  to  the  Chinese,  the 
native  Africans,  the  Hindus,  the  Australians, 
the  Indians  of  South  America,  the  Polynesians, 
and  the  Eskimos;  but  the  sentence  is  neverthe 
less  a  very  forcible  one. 


XXIX 

60  H.P. 

FOR  the  purpose  of  getting  one's  name  into  the 
papers,  the  acquisition  of  a  high-powered  auto 
mobile  may  be  recommended  to  the  man  who  has 
never  given  a  monkey  dinner ;  whose  son  was 
never  married  to  a  show-girl  in  a  balloon  at 
2.30  A.M.  ;  whose  son-in-law  is  neither  a  count, 
a  duke,  nor  a  prince,  and  does  not  beat  his 
wife;  who  has  never  paid  $100,000  for  a 
Velasquez  painted  in  1897,  or  for  a  mediaeval 
Florentine  altar-piece  made  in  Dayton,  Ohio. 
The  press,  like  the  public,  does  not  brim  over 
with  affection  for  the  motorist.  From  the 
newspapers  it  may  be  gathered  that  when  a 
man  has  been  seen  in  the  front  seat  of  an  auto 
mobile  his  family  prefers  not  to  allude  to  the 
285 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

subject.  Good  men  occasionally  ride,  but  as 
a  rule  only  on  errands  of  mercy,  and  always 
in  a  friend's  machine.  A  candidate  for  mayor 
will  laugh  when  you  accuse  him  of  owning  an 
opium  den,  taking  $10,000  a  month  from  Mr. 
Morgan,  or  experimenting  freely  in  polygamy; 
but  he  throws  up  his  hands  when  some  one 
proves  that  he  has  been  seen  in  a  garage. 

To  me  this  seems  absurd.  If  people  admit 
that  the  automobile  is  here  to  stay,  they  must 
also  admit  that  it  is  here  to  move  from  place 
to  place  occasionally.  Automobiles  that  did 
nothing  but  stay  would  obviously  fail  in  one 
of  their  principal  aims.  Not  that  the  auto 
has  no  other  important  functions.  It  is  evi 
dent  that  motor-cars  were  intended  for  little 
boys  who  squeeze  the  signal  bulb  and  stick  nails 
into  the  tires;  for  Republican  orators  to  cite 
as  evidence  that  the  American  farmer  does  not 
want  the  tariff  revised;  for  foreign  observers 
286 


60   H.P. 

to  prove  that  we  are  developing  an  aristocracy ; 
and  for  Tammany  office-holders  to  snatch  a  bit 
of  relaxation  after  the  day's  long  grind. 

Motoring  is  not  unmitigated  bliss.  The 
common  belief  that  a  body  may  be  in  only  one 
place  at  one  time  can  be  easily  refuted  by  a 
woman  with  a  baby-carriage.  Experience  shows 
that  such  a  woman,  if  she  be  put  five  feet  from 
a  sidewalk,  with  forty  feet  of  open  road  be 
hind  her  for  an  auto  to  pass  through,  will  cover 
the  forty  feet  backward  with  incredible  speed 
and  propel  herself  right  in  front  of  the  car. 
What  would  happen  if  two  cars  came  in  opposite 
directions  on  opposite  sides  of  a  hundred-foot 
avenue  cannot  be  predicted.  Either  the  woman 
would  be  accompanied  by  another  woman  with 
a  baby-carriage,  or  else,  having  propelled  her 
own  carriage  in  front  of  the  machine  going 
north,  she  would  proceed  to  give  her  personal 
attention  to  the  car  going  south. 
287 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

It  is  difficult  to  start  on  a  short  spin  in 
town,  under  doctor's  orders,  without  immedi 
ately  beginning  to  wonder  why  house  rents  and 
office  rents  should  be  going  up  steadily  in  face 
of  the  fact  that  the  population  of  New  York 
transacts  its  business  and  pursues  its  pleasures 
entirely  in  the  middle  of  the  road.  German 
citizens,  as  a  rule,  stop  to  light  their  pipes  on 
a  street  crossing.  When  you  give  them  the 
horn,  they  are  seized  with  the  belief  that  you 
are  trying  to  play  the  prelude  to  "  Lohengrin," 
and  they  run  up  and  down  in  front  of  the  car 
in  extreme  agitation.  You  frustrate  their 
plans  for  a  beautiful  death  by  rasping  your 
tires  against  the  curb,  together  with  your 
nerves.  At  Seventy-second  Street  two  women 
are  saying  good-bye  in  the  middle  of  the  street. 
You  swerve  to  one  side  and  they  pursue.  You 
snap  your  spinal  column  as  you  shoot  the  car 
straight  about,  but  when  you  get  there  they 
288 


60  H.P. 

are  there.  "  Ladies,"  you  say,  "  I  am  not  lead 
ing  a  cotillion.  I  am  an  old  man  out  for  a  bit 
of  fresh  air."  Thereupon  one  calls  you  a 
brute  and  the  other  discerns  from  the  colour 
of  your  nose  that  you  have  been  drinking.  At 
Forty-second  Street  you  catch  sight  of  your 
doctor.  "  Have  you  killed  any  one?  "  he  says, 
after  the  cheerful  manner  of  doctors.  "  No," 
you  say,  "  but  if  you  will  kindly  step  into  the 
car,  I  will." 

Of  the  American  farmer  it  may  be  said  that, 
Mr.  Roosevelt  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding, 
he  is  not  an  unimaginative,  overworked  being. 
It  can  be  demonstrated  that  the  contemplative 
life  is  on  the  increase  in  the  rural  districts. 
Apparently,  there  is  nothing  more  peaceful, 
nothing  more  restful,  nothing  more  soothing, 
nothing  more  permeated  with  the  spirit  of 
dolce  far  niente,  than  the  American  farmer  on 
his  wagon  in  a  narrow  road  with  an  auto  be- 
289 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

hind  him.  The  grunt  of  the  horn  invariably 
stirs  in  him  memories  of  his  aged  grandmother, 
dead  these  twenty  years,  and  he  falls  a  won 
dering  whether  he  was  really  as  kind  to  her 
as  he  might  have  been.  If  the.  road  is  just 
wide  enough  for  one  vehicle,  he  moves  along 
pensively.  If  it  is  wide  enough  for  two 
vehicles,  he  throws  his  horses  straight  across 
the  road  and  enters  upon  a  prolonged  examina 
tion  of  his  rear  axle.  If  the  road  is  wide 
enough  for  three  vehicles,  he  drives  zigzag. 
The  necessity  of  conserving  our  natural  re 
sources  would  seem  to  be  a  meaningless  phrase 
when  we  consider  the  natural  resources  of  an 
American  farmer  in  front  of  an  automobile. 

The  law  and  the  courts  press  hard  on  the 
autoist.  Since  the  invention  of  the  automobile 
fine,  the  position  of  justice  of  the  peace  has 
become  one  of  the  highest  offices  in  the  gift 
of  the  nation.  The  city  magistrate  is  a  kindred 
290 


60  H.P. 

soul.  "  Your  Honour,"  says  the  prosecuting 
officer,  "  the  question  is  whether  the  city's 
boulevards  shall  be  given  over  to  the  owners  of 
these  destructive  vehicles  or  whether  they  shall 
be  held  clear  for  the  use  of  Marathon  runners, 
suffragette  meetings,  baseball  teams,  and  '  crap  ' 
games.  The  streets,  your  Honour,  are  for  the 
benefit  of  the  majority;  yet  only  the  other  day 
on  Fifth  Avenue  I  saw  two  ash-carts  and  an 
ice  wagon  held  up  by  a  continuous  stream  of 
automobiles."  "  Right,"  says  the  judge,  and 
he  turns  to  the  victim :  "  What  were  you  doing 
in  the  middle  of  the  street  when  defendant  ran 
you  down  wantonly  and  without  cause?  "  "  I 
was  sleeping,  your  Honour,"  says  the  complain 
ant,  "  having  been  overtaken  with  drowsiness  on 
my  way  home  from  a  select  social  affair." 
"  Outrageous,"  says  the  magistrate.  "  Think 
of  running  into  a  sleeping  man.  One  hundred 
dollars." 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Such  incidents  make  it  clear  that  the  auto 
mobile  as  an  annihilator  of  space  has  estab 
lished  its  reputation.  In  the  days  before  the 
auto  a  drive  of  fifteen  or  twenty  miles  consti 
tuted  a  good  Sunday's  outing.  To-day  a  man 
can  leave  New  Rochelle  at  eight  o'clock  in  the 
morning  and  pay  a  fine  at  Poughkeepsie  at 
one  in  the  afternoon,  or  he  can  leave  Pough 
keepsie  at  eight  in  the  morning  and  at  one  in 
the  afternoon  be  in  the  lock-up  at  New 
Rochelle. 

What  hurts  the  motorist's  feelings  most  of 
all,  however,  is  to  be  regarded  by  the  public 
as  a  sort  of  licensed  assassin.  Yet  almost  any 
one  can  think  of  people  who  drive  a  car  and 
take  no  pleasure  in  spilling  blood.  The  com 
mon  belief  that  automobile  killing  is  a  fa 
vourite  sport  among  our  best  families  seems 
to  be  based  on  the  fact  that  in  nine  cases  out 
of  ten  the  occupants  of  a  man-slaying  automo- 
292 


60  H.P. 

bile  bear  such  well-known  Knickerbocker  names 
as  Mr.  William  Moriarty,  chauffeur;  his  friend, 
Mr.  James  Dugan,  who  is  prominent  in  coal- 
heaving  circles ;  and  their  friends,  the  Misses 
Mayme  Schultz  and  Bessie  Goldstein.  At  bot 
tom,  it  would  seem,  most  of  the  criticism  di 
rected  against  the  automobile  is  based  on  its 
failure  to  take  a  hog  and  turn  him  into  a 
gentleman.  But  in  this  respect  automobiles  are 
like  many  of  our  colleges.  The  comforting 
thing  is  that  the  life  of  the  automobile  hog  is 
an  uncertain  one.  Sooner  or  later  he  runs 
down  a  steep  place  into  the  sea,  like  certain  of 
his  species  mentioned  in  the  Bible,  and  the  ques 
tion  adjusts  itself. 

Meanwhile,  however,  the  decent  motorist 
must  suffer  for  the  other's  sins.  A  friend  says : 
"  The  only  time  I  dare  be  seen  in  my  machine 
is  between  11  A.M.  and  4  P.M.  Before  that 
time  people  point  me  out  as  a  '  joy-rider '  re- 
293 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

turning  from  a  night's  debauch.  After  that 
time  I  am  a  'joy-rider'  bound  for  a  night  of 
it."  The  complaint  rings  true.  The  exhilara 
tion  aroused  by  a  punctured  tire  in  the  open 
country  gathers  strength  from  the  remarks  of 
the  spectators  who  wonder  if  you  made  your 
money  honestly.  In  town  a  defective  spark 
plug  brings  the  close  attention  of  a  crowd 
which  exchanges  opinions  as  to  whether  the 
lady  in  the  tonneau  is  your  wife.  All  agree 
that  you  must  have  mortgaged  your  home  to 
buy  the  machine. 

And  yet  it  is  evident  that  much  misunder 
standing  could  be  avoided  if  we  had  a  simple 
code  of  rules  for  people  who  cross  the  street 
just  as  there  are  regulations  for  the  autoist.  A 
few  such  rules  suggest  themselves:  1.  If  one  is 
about  to  cross  the  street  in  front  of  an  auto, 
one  should  do  so  either  before  the  man  in  the 
car  succumbs  to  heart  failure  or  after,  but  not 
294 


60   H.P. 

while  the  driver  is  wrestling  with  death;  it  is 
in  such  cases  that  one  is  apt  to  get  hurt.  2. 
If  one  is  in  the  middle  of  the  road  and  sees  a 
car  approaching,  one  should  move  either  (a) 
away  from  the  car,  (b)  towards  the  car,  (c)  to 
the  right,  (d)  to  the  left,  or  (e)  stand  still; 
under  no  circumstances  should  one  attempt  to 
combine  (a),  (6),  (c),  (d),  and  (e).  3.  The 
safest  place  from  which  to  ascertain  the  make 
of  an  automobile  or  to  estimate  its  cost  is  the 
sidewalk. 


295 


XXX 

THE  SAMPLE  LIFE 

THE  hour,  the  occasion,  and  the  scene  were 
conducive  to  melancholy.  We  had  walked  a 
good  fifteen  miles  into  the  open  country  and 
back  again  under  chilly  clouds,  and  were  now 
paying  for  it  with  an  empty  sense  of  weariness 
and  disenchantment.  There  is  nothing  so  de 
pressing  as  a  bare  room  lit  up  by  flaring  gas- 
jets  against  the  gloom  of  a  late  afternoon  of 
rain;  and  the  lights  in  Scipione's  little  cellar 
restaurant  flared  away  in  the  most  outrageous 
manner.  Harding,  across  the  table  from  me, 
wretchedly  fluttered  the  pages  of  a  popular 
magazine  and  looked  ill-natured  and  horribly 
unkempt.  The  new  table-cloths  had  not  yet 
been  laid  for  dinner.  The  sawdust  on  the  floor 
296 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

was  mostly  mire.  Angelina,  the  cook,  was 
screaming  at  Paolo  and  Francesca,  who  were 
trying  to  boil  the  cat.  It  was  very  dreary. 

"  Harding,"  I  said,  "  you  were  insisting  only 
a  little  while  ago  that  life  is  always  beautiful." 

"  So  it  is,"  he  replied,  too  listless  to  be  de 
fiant.  "  To  some  people." 

"To  whom?" 

"  Well,  to  the  two  here,  for  instance,"  and 
he  pointed  to  a  pair  of  handsome  lovers  playing 
golf  all  over  a  double  page  in  the  advertising 
section  of  his  magazine.  "  Do  you  mean  to 
say  these  two  ever  know  what  ugliness  is,  or 
pain,  or  want?  Or  ever  grow  old?  Or  cease 
to  love?  Here  is  the  perfect  life  for  you." 

"Are  you  so  sure  of  that?"  said  some  one 
over  my  shoulder,  and  I  turned  about  sharply 
to  look  into  the  most  entrancing  face  I  have 
ever  beheld  in  man  or  woman.  It  was  Apollo 
standing  there  above  me,  or  if  not  he,  at  least 
297 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

one  of  the  divine  youths  that  the  Greeks  have 
left  for  us  in  undying  marble.  He  made  Scipi- 
one's  grimy  cellar  luminous  with  beauty. 

"  I  beg  your  pardon  for  intruding,"  he  said, 
seating  himself  at  our  table  as  joyously  confi 
dent  and  as  simple  as  an  immortal  should  be. 
"  But  I  feel  myself  competent  to  speak  on  the 
point  you  have  raised  because  the  Advertising 
Supplement  you  refer  to  is  my  own  home.  This 
very  young  man  playing  golf  is,  as  you  will 
observe,  no  other  than  myself." 

There  was  no  denying  the  amazing  resem 
blance. 

"  You  say  the  Advertising  Supplement  is 
your  home,"  I  collected  myself  sufficiently  to 
ask,  "  but  just  how  do  you  mean  that?  " 

"Literally,"  he  replied.  "My  whole  life, 
and  for  that  matter  my  parents'  life  before  me, 
has  been  spent  in  the  pages  you  are  now  finger 
ing.  My  name  is  Pinckney,  Walter  Pinckney, 
298 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

and  if  you  are  sufficiently  interested  in  my  ca 
reer  I  should  be  glad  to  describe  it." 

"  Go  ahead,"  cried  Harding,  with  almost  fe 
rocious  earnestness. 

"  If  I  begin  a  bit  back  before  my  birth," 
said  Pinckney,  "  you  will  be  patient  with  me. 
I  will  not  detain  you  very  long." 

"  Begin  where  you  please,"  said  Harding  in 
the  same  grim  manner;  "  only  begin." 

"  My  father,"  commenced  young  Pinckney, 
"  at  eighteen,  was  a  sickly  country  lad  with 
less  than  the  usual  elementary  education  and  no 
other  prospects  than  a  life  of  drudgery  on  the 
old  farm.  But  there  was  in  him  an  elemental 
strength  of  will  that  was  sufficient,  as  it  turned 
out,  to  master  fate.  You  have  read  his  life 
again  and  again  in  the  Advertising  Pages  of  our 
magazines.  On  his  nineteenth  birthday,  as  I 
have  heard  him  tell  many  a  time,  he  began  the 
reshaping  of  his  life  by  investing  the  small 
299 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

sum  of  fifty  cents  in  a  manual  of  home 
exercise  and  enrolling  himself  at  the  same  time 
with  one  of  our  best-known  correspondence 
schools,  which  offered  an  attractive  course  in 
engineering  and  scientific  irrigation.  Simul 
taneously,  from  that  day  he  carried  on  the  work 
of  his  bodily  and  intellectual  redemption.  We 
still  have  at  home  a  collection  of  the  various 
domestic  utensils  which  he  employed  in  his  daily 
training — an  old  armchair;  a  broom;  a  large 
gilt  portrait  frame  through  which  he  would 
leap  twenty-five  times  every  morning;  a  marble 
clock;  a  pair  of  water  buckets;  an  old  trunk 
lid,  and  other  articles  of  the  kind.  Close  be 
side  his  gymnastic  apparatus  we  keep  three 
trunkfuls  of  note-books  and  reports  represent 
ing  as  many  years  devoted  labour  at  his 
studies.  At  the  age  of  twenty-six  my  father 
was  a  veritable  Hercules  and  held  the  position 
of  assistant  to  the  chief  engineer  of  an  im- 
300 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

portant  Eastern  railroad.  It  was  shortly  after 
he  had  won  this  place  that  he  met  my  mother." 

The  caressing  fondness  with  which  he  uttered 
the  last  word  imparted  to  his  seemingly  supreme 
beauty  an  added  warmth  of  appeal. 

"  Her,  too,  you  have  met  in  the  Advertising 
Columns.  She  had  begun  to  teach  school  when 
a  mere  girl;  but  when  her  father's  death  threw 
upon  her  young  shoulders  the  burden  of  three 
little  children  and  a  helpless  mother,  she  had 
risen  to  her  greater  needs.  She  succeeded  in 
quadrupling  her  income  by  learning  to  write 
short  stories,  criticism,  and  verse,  from  a  lit 
erary  bureau  which  charged  her  a  nominal  fee 
for  instruction  and  purchased  her  output  at  ex 
tremely  generous  rates  for  disposal  among  the 
leading  magazines.  When  my  father  first  saw 
her — it  was  in  the  course  of  a  Fourth  of  July 
excursion  to  Niagara  Falls  which,  including  a 
three  days'  stay  at  the  best  hotels,  was  offered 
301 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

to  the  public  at  half  the  usual  cost — she  had 
sent  the  eldest  boy  through  college,  her  younger 
sister  was  teaching  school,  and  she  was  free  to 
follow  the  inclinations  of  her  heart." 

"  You  were  fortunate  in  the  selection  of  your 
immediate  ancestry,"  said  Harding. 

"  Was  I  not?"  Pinckney  responded  in  a 
flush  of  grateful  recognition.  "  But  that  is 
not  all.  The  house  in  which  I  was  born,  though 
generally  recognized  as  one  of  the  finest  ex 
amples  of  Queen  Anne  architecture  in  rein 
forced  concrete,  was  put  up  by  my  father,  un 
assisted,  from  plans  which  he  purchased  for  a 
ridiculously  small  sum.  Its  every  nook  was  the 
abiding-place  of  love,  of  quiet  content,  and  of 
nurturing  comfort.  The  furnace  was  equipped 
with  the  latest  automatic  devices  so  that  it  had 
to  be  started  only  once  a  year.  It  was  then 
left  to  the  care  of  my  mother,  who  used  to  give 
it  only  a  few  minutes'  attention  every  day  with- 
302 


THE    SAMPLE    LIFE 

out  going  to  the  trouble  of  divesting  herself  of 
the  gown  of  fine  white  lawn  which  she  always 
wore." 

"  My  dear  fellow,"  I  could  not  keep  from 
exclaiming,  "  you  have  almost  explained  your 
self.  In  such  surroundings  how  could  you  help 
growing  up  into  what  you  are?  " 

"  That  is  what  I  say,  sir,"  he  came  back  at 
me  eagerly.  "  But  you  must  call  to  mind,  also, 
the  fostering  personal  care  that  was  bestowed 
upon  us  children.  Take  the  matter  of  diet. 
Coffee,  cocoa,  excessive  sweets,  every  food- 
element  tending  to  narcotise  or  over-stimulate 
the  system  was  rigorously  excluded.  Instead 
we  had  the  numerous  grain  preparations  that 
assist  nature  by  contributing  directly  to  the 
development  of  our  particular  faculties.  In  my 
case,  for  instance,  it  had  been  decided  some  time 
before  I  was  born  that  in  the  course  of  time 
I  should  enter  West  Point.  With  that  end  in 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

view  Farinette,  because  of  its  muscle-building 
powers,  was  made  the  principal  constituent  of 
my  bill  of  fare.  Later,  when  my  parents 
thought  that  the  pulpit  offered  better  chances 
of  a  successful  career,  Farinette  was  replaced 
by  Panema,  which  is  notably  efficacious  in  the 
production  of  cerebral  tissue.  Just  as  I  was 
taking  my  examinations  for  college  it  was 
finally  determined  that  the  sphere  of  corpora 
tion  finance  held  out  unrivalled  facilities  for 
advancement,  and  Panema  gave  way  to  Hydro- 
nuxia,  which  acts  particularly  on  the  imagi 
native  faculties.  As  for  my  sisters,  they  fared 
no  worse  than  I.  You  surely  have  seen  them 
in  the  Advertising  Pages  in  all  their  splendid 
bloom.  Saved  from  overwork  by  soaps  that 
make  heavy  washing  a  pleasure,  eternally 
youthful  through  the  use  of  electric  massage, 
they  smile  at  you  through  the  reticulations  of 
the  tennis  racket  which  the  champion  played 
304 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

with  at  Newport,  or  recline  under  parasols  in 
the  bow  of  canoes  that  will  neither  sink  nor  up 
set.  They  are  very  fond  of  playing  Chopin  on 
a  mechanical  piano  while  the  moonlight  streams 
over  the  floor  of  the  open  veranda." 

Here  Harding  broke  in  sharply.  "  You  be 
gan  by  differing  with  me  on  the  possibility  of 
finding  complete  happiness  in  life,  and  you 
have  done  nothing  but  refute  your  own  position 
from  the  very  first.  I  admit  there  are  certain 
essentials  toward  the  perfect  life  that  you  have 
not  mentioned,  but  I  haven't  the  least  doubt  that 
you  already  possess  them  or  that  they  will  come 
to  you  in  time.  I  mean  such  things  as  riches 
or  love." 

"  Ah,  love,"  Pinckney  murmured,  and  the 
shadow  of  a  cloud  passed  over  his  divine  brow. 

"  Surely,"  I  said,  "  you  have  not  sought 
for  what  love  has  to  give  and  sought  in 
vain?" 

305 


THE    PATIENT   OBSERVER 

"  No,"  he  replied  thoughtfully,  "  I  have  not 
failed  to  win  love.  But  does  love  bring  with 
it  untouched  felicity ;  that  is  what  I  ask."  He 
hesitated.  "  I  will  not  attempt  to  describe  her. 
I  really  could  not,  you  know,  except  in  a  feeble 
waJ>  by  saying  that  even  to  other  eyes  than 
mine  she  is  a  woman  more  wonderful  than  any 
of  my  sisters,  if  that  is  at  all  possible.  We 
loved  at  first  sight.  I  had  run  down  for  a  Sun 
day  afternoon  to  Garden  Towers-by-the-Sea,  a 
beautiful  suburb  which  a  number  of  enterpris 
ing  citizens  had  built  up  out  of  a  sand  waste 
to  meet  the  needs  of  the  tired  urban  worker 
who,  in  his  expensive  and  uncomfortable  city 
flat,  finds  himself  longing  for  the  life-giving 
breeze  of  the  ocean  and  the  sight  of  a  bit  of 
God's  open  country.  I  was  walking  down  the 
main  street  of  the  village,  wearing  the  loosely 
shaped  and  well-padded  garments  that  were 
then  popular  with  young  men,  and  carrying 
306 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

a  set  of  golf -sticks  in  my  right  hand  and  a  bull 
terrier  under  my  arm.  Then  I  saw  her.  She 
was  sitting  on  the  porch  of  the  house  which 
her  father  had  purchased  for  one-third  of  what 
its  value  became  when  the  completion  of  ex 
tensive  rapid-transit  improvements  brought  it 
within  thirty-five  minutes  of  the  New  York 
City  Hall.  We  loved  and  told  each  other.  My 
father,  at  first,  insisted  that  before  assuming 
the  responsibilities  of  marriage  a  man  should 
be  in  receipt  of  a  larger  independent  income 
than  I  could  boast  of.  But  when  Alice  pleaded 
that  she  could  be  of  help  by  raising  high-grade 
poultry  for  the  urban  market  and  organising 
subscribers'  clubs  for  the  magazines,  my  father 
yielded.  We  are  to  be  married  in  two  months, 
sir." 

Harding  spoke  up  impatiently.     "  Still  I  fail 
to  see  where  your  unhappiness  lies." 

"Did  I  say  unhappiness?     That  is  not  at 
307 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

all  the  word,  sir.  It  is  rather  a  sense  of  awe 
that  seizes  us  both  at  times,  when  we  are  to 
gether,  as  though  we  were  in  the  presence  of 
unseen  influences ;  as  though,  rather,  a  world 
not  our  own  were  projecting  itself  into  our 
well-defined  lives.  I  have  shown  you  that  Alice 
and  I  belong  to  a  very  real,  very  matter-of- 
fact  world.  But  there  are  times  when  we  seem 
to  be  walking  in  a  land  of  strange  sounds  and 
sights  and  of  shadows  that  fan  our  cheeks  as 
they  flit  by." 

"  Oh,  well,"  I  said,  "  when  two  fond  young 
people  are  together  the  limits  of  the  visible 
world  are  apt  to  undergo  undue  extension." 

"  Let  me  be  specific,"  said  Pinckney.  "  We 
first  became  aware  of  this  state  of  things  some 
weeks  ago.  We  were  walking  one  afternoon  at 
twilight  through  a  stretch  of  woods  not  far 
from  the  shore  when  all  at  once  we  were  con 
scious  that  the  familiar  aspect  of  things  had  van- 
308 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

ished.  The  park  had  become  a  virgin  forest. 
Two  savage  figures  girded  with  skins  were  pant 
ing  in  deadly  combat.  One  had  sunk  his  thumbs 
into  the  eye-sockets  of  his  opponent,  who,  in 
turn,  had  buried  his  teeth  in  the  flesh  of  the 
other's  arm.  A  wild  creature,  almost  hidden 
in  the  long  tangle  of  her  hair,  crouched  there, 
the  only  spectator  of  the  battle,  chanting  in 
weird  tones :  '  Ai !  Ai !  the  call  of  the  wild  sum 
mons  you  to  the  death-grapple,  oh  Men,  and 
me  to  sing  who  am  Woman!  Fight  on,  oh 
Men;  for  it  is  Good!  The  Race,  the  Sons  of 
your  strong  loins  through  the  dizzy  whirl- 
dance  of  all  time,  are  watching  you.  Match 
man-strength  against  man-strength,  breath- 
rhythm  against  breath-rhythm,  and  knee- 
thrust  against  knee-thrust ! '  And  then  one  of 
the  combatants  fell,  and  the  victor  with  a  yell 
of  triumph  seized  the  woman  by  the  hair  and, 
flinging  her  over  his  shoulder,  staggered  off, 
309 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

and  we  heard  them  call  to  each  other,  '  Oh,  my 
Male ! '  '  Oh,  my  Female ! '  Then  we  were  in 
our  own  grove  by  the  beach  and  Alice  whis 
pered  dreamily,  '  Dearest,  how  tame  are  our 
lives.' " 

"  I  think  I  begin  to  understand,"  said  I. 
"  What  happened  was  simply  that  you  had 
walked  right  out  of  the  Advertising  Supple 
ment  into  the  Fiction  pages;  and  that  was 
Jack  London.  Had  you  other  experiences  of 
the  kind?" 

"  On  another  occasion,"  he  resumed,  "  we 
were  walking  on  the  beach  and  again  in  a  flash 
we  had  lost  our  footing  in  the  world  we  knew. 
We  were  in  a  magnificent  ballroom.  The  chan 
deliers  were  Venetian,  the  orchestra  was  Hun 
garian,  the  decorations  were  priceless  orchids. 
Every  woman  wore  a  tiara  with  chains  of 
pearls.  There  were  stout  dowagers,  callow 
youths,  gamblers,  and  blacklegs,  and,  among 
310 


THE    SAMPLE   LIFE 

the  many  handsome  men,  one  of  about  five-and- 
thirty,  with  a  wonderfully  cut  chin,  bending 
sedulously  over  a  glorious,  slender  girl  whose 
eyes  attested  the  purity  of  her  soul  and  fidelity 
unto  death.  '  Dearest,'  she  was  saying,  '  what 
does  it  matter  that  my  father  was  the  greatest 
Greek  scholar  in  America  and  my  mother  the 
most  beautiful  woman  south  of  Mason  and 
Dixon's  line?  What  that  I  have  ten  million 
dollars  and  can  ride,  shoot,  swim,  golf,  tennis, 
dance,  sing,  compose,  cook,  and  interpret  the 
Irish  sagas?  I  love  you  though  you  have  only 
twelve  thousand  a  year.'  And  all  over  the  hall 
we  caught  such  phrases  as,  '  Yes,'  he  dropped 
25,000  on  Non  Sequitur  at  Bennings.'  'Oh, 
just  down  for  three  weeks  at  Palm  Beach,  you 
know.'  '  Two  millions  in  three  weeks,  they  say, 
mostly  out  of  Copper  and  Q.C.B.'  '  Yes,  just 
back  from  South  Dakota  on  the  best  of  terms.' 
Then  the  room  vanished,  we  were  by  the  sea, 
311 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

and  Alice  said  wistfully,  *  How  limited  our  lives 
are,  dear.'  " 

I  said :  "  My  theory  holds  good.  That  was 
Robert  Chambers,  I  am  sure.  Go  on." 

"  I  have  told  you  enough,"  said  Pinckney, 
"  to  show  what  I  mean  by  the  shadow  over  our 
happiness.  It  will  pass  away,  of  course.  In 
the  meantime  I  try  to  explain  to  Alice  that 
these  are  phantoms  we  vision,  of  no  relation  to 
the  practical  life  that  we  must  lead  on  our  side 
of  the  boundary  line;  I  tell  her  that  these 
things  we  see  are  not,  and  never  have  been  and 
never  will  be.  Am  I  right,  do  you  think,  sir?  " 

"  Quite  right,"  I  told  him. 


XXXI 

THE  COMPLETE  COLLECTOR— IV 

"My  latest  fad,"  said  Cooper,  "is  this  little 
library  of  the  greatest  names  in  literature.  It 
is  by  no  means  complete,  but  the  nucleus  is 
there." 

When  Cooper  speaks  of  his  fads  he  does 
himself  injustice.  The  world  might  think 
them  fads,  or  worse.  But  I,  who  know  the 
man,  know  that  his  fondness  for  the  insignifi 
cant  or  the  extraordinary  is  something  more 
than  eccentricity,  something  more  than  a  col 
lector's  appetite  run  amuck.  In  reality,  Coo 
per's  soul  goes  out  to  the  worthless  objects 
he  frequently  brings  together  into  odd  little 
museums.  He  loves  them  precisely  because  they 
are  insignificant.  His  whole  life  has  been  a 
313 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

silent  protest  against  the  arrogance  of  suc 
cess,  of  high  merit,  of  rare  value.  His  heart 
is  always  on  the  side  of  the  Untermemch,  a 
name  given  by  the  Germans,  a  learned  people, 
to  what  we  call  the  under-dog. 

"  My  collection,"  said  Cooper,  "  is  as  yet 
confined  almost  entirely  to  authors  in  the  Eng 
lish  language.  Here  is  my  Shakespeare,  a  first 
edition,  I  believe,  though  undated.  The  year, 
I  presume,  was  about  1875.  The  title,  you 
see,  is  comprehensive :  '  The  Nature  of  Evapo 
rating  Inflammations  in  Arteries  After  Liga 
ture,  Accupressure,  and  Torsion.'  Edward  O. 
Shakespeare,  who  wrote  the  book,  is  not  a  de 
bated  personality.  His  authorship  of  the  book 
is  unquestioned,  and  I  assure  you  it  is  a  com 
fort  to  handle  a  text  which  you  know  left  its 
author's  mind  exactly  as  it  now  confronts  you 
in  the  page. 

"  Next  to  the  Shakespeare  you  find  my  Dick- 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — IV 

ens  volumes,  two  in  number.  Albert  Dickens 
published,  in  1904,  his  '  Tests  of  Forest 
Trees.'  It  has  been  praised  in  authoritative 
quarters  as  an  excellent  work  of  its  kind.  An 
older  book  is  '  Dickens's  Continental  A  B  C,' 
a  railway  guide  which  I  am  fond  of  thinking  of 
as  the  probable  instrument  of  a  vast  amount 
of  human  happiness.  Imagine  the  happy  meet 
ings  and  reunions  which  this  chubby  little  book 
has  made  possible — husbands  and  wives,  fa 
thers  and  children,  lovers,  who  from  the  most 
distant  corners  of  the  earth  have  sought  and 
found  each  other  by  means  of  the  Dickens  rail 
way  time-tables.  To  how  many  beds  of  ill 
ness  has  it  brought  a  comforter,  to  how  many 
habitations  of  despair — but  I  must  not  preach. 
I  call  your  attention  to  the  next  volume,  Byron. 
From  the  title,  '  A  Handbook  of  Lake  Min- 
netonka,'  you  will  perceive  that  it  is  in  the 
same  class  as  my  Dickens." 
315 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

Cooper  drew  his  handkerchief  to  flip  the 
dust  from  a  thin  octavo  in  sheepskin.  "  This 
Emerson,"  he  said,  "  is  the  earliest  in  date  of 
my  Americana.  William  Emerson's  *  A  Ser 
mon  on  the  Decease  of  the  Rev.  Peter  Thacher  ' 
appeared  in  1802,  at  a  time  when  people  still 
thought  it  worth  while  to  utilise  the  death  of 
a  good  man  by  putting  him  into  a  book  for 
the  edification  of  the  living.  The  adjoining 
two  volumes  are  by  Spencer.  Charles  E. 
Spencer's  '  Rue,  Thyme,  and  Myrtle '  is  a  sheaf 
of  dainty  poetry  which  was  very  popular  in 
Philadelphia  during  the  second  decade  after 
the  Civil  War.  Do  we  still  write  poetry  as 
single-heartedly  as  people  did?  It  may  be. 
Perhaps  we  might  find  out  by  comparing  this 
other  volume  by  Edwin  Spencer,  '  Cakes  and 
Ale,'  published  in  1897,  with  the  Philadelphia 
Spencer  of  forty  years  ago. 

"  I  must  hurry  you  through  the  rest  of  my 
316 


COMPLETE    COLLECTOR  — IV 

books,"  said  Cooper.  "  Thomas  James  Thack 
eray's  '  The  Soldier's  Manual  of  Rifle-Firing ' 
appeared  in  1858,  and  undoubtedly  had  its  day 
of  usefulness.  Thomas  Kipling  was  professor 
of  divinity  at  Cambridge  University  toward  the 
end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  1793  he 
edited  the  volume  I  now  hold  in  my  hand, 
'  Codex  Bezae,'  one  of  the  most  precious  of  our 
extant  MSS.  of  the  New  Testament.  I  like  to 
think  of  that  fine  old  Cambridge  professor's 
name  as  bound  up  with  patient,  self-effacing 
scholarship  and  a  highly  developed  spiritu 
ality.  But  I  digress.  Cast  your  eye  over  this 
little  group  of  foreign  writers.  Here  is  Du 
mas, — Jean  Baptiste  Dumas, — whose  fi  Le9ons 
sur  la  philosophic  chimique,'  delivered  in  1835, 
were  considered  worthy  of  being  published 
thirty  years  later.  The  quaint  volume  that 
comes  next  is  by  Du  Maurier,  who  was  French 
ambassador  to  the  Hague  about  1620.  The 
317 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

title,  in  the  Dutch,  is  '  Propositie  gedan  door 
den  Heere  van  Maurier,'  etc. — '  Propositions 
Advanced  by  the  Sieur  du  Maurier,'  one  of  the 
Regent's  able  and  merry-hearted  diplomats,  I 
take  it.  And  here  is  Goethe;  he  would  repay 
your  reading.  Rudolf  Goethe's  '  Mitteilungen 
ueber  Obst-  und  Gartenbau  '  is  one  of  the  stand 
ard  works  on  horticulture. 

"  And  finally,"  said  Cooper  with  a  flash  of 
pride  quite  unusual  in  him,  "  the  treasure  of 
my  little  library — Homer;  again  a  first  edi 
tion." 

"  Homer !  "  I  cried.     "  An  editio  princeps!  " 

"  Nearly  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  old," 
he  said.  "  The  Rev.  Henry  Homer  deserved 
well  of  his  British  countrymen  when  he  gave 
to  the  world — it  was  in  1767 — his  '  Inquiry 
Into  the  Measures  of  Preserving  and  Improv 
ing  the  Publick  Roads  of  this  Kingdom.' " 

Cooper  sat  down  and  eyed  me  doubtfully,  as 
313 


COMPLETE   COLLECTOR  —  IV 

if  awaiting  an  unfavourable  opinion.  His  face 
quite  lit  up  when  I  hastened  to  assure  him  that 
his  library  was  one  of  the  most  impressive  col 
lections  it  had  ever  been  my  good  fortune  to 
know. 

"  Very  few  collections,"  I  told  him,  "  bear 
the  impress  of  a  personality.  As  a  rule  they 
are  shopfuls  of  costly  masterpieces  such  as  any 
multi-millionaire  may  have  if  he  doesn't  prefer 
horses  or  monkey  dinners.  But  how  often  does 
one  find  a  treasure-house  like  yours,  Cooper, 
revealing  an  exquisitely  discriminating  taste  in 
co-operation  with  the  bold  originality  of  the 
true  amateur?  " 


319 


XXXII 

CHOPIN'S  SUCCESSORS 

"!T  is  his  own  composition,  the  final  word  in 
modern  music,"  I  had  been  told.  "  He  does  not 
merely  play  the  concerto ;  he  lives  it.  Be  sure 
to  watch  his  face."  It  was  not  a  very  im 
pressive  face  as  artists  go.  It  was  rather 
heavy,  rather  sullen,  and  seemingly  incapable  of 
mirroring  more  than  the  elementary  passions. 
The  great  pianist  entered  the  hall  almost  un 
willingly,  and  wound  his  way  among  the  mu 
sicians  with  consummate  indifference  to  the 
roar  of  applause  that  greeted  him.  You  might 
have  said  that  he  was  once  more  a  little  boy 
being  scourged  to  his  piano  day  after  day  by 
parents  who  had  been  told  that  they  had 
brought  forth  a  genius.  He  half -dropped  into 
320 


CHOPIN'S   SUCCESSORS 

his  seat,  glanced  wearily  about  him,  then  let  his 
eyes  sink  expressionless  on  the  keyboard  and 
his  hands  fall  flat  on  his  knees,  nerveless,  heavy, 
apathetic. 

The  orchestra  leader  poised  his  baton  and 
the  two-score  strings  under  his  command  swung 
into  a  noble  andante.  The  artist  at  the  piano 
slowly  raised  his  eyes  to  a  level  with  the  top 
of  his  instrument,  his  lips  just  parted  as  if 
in  halting  wonder  at  something  he  alone  in  the 
great  hall  could  see,  the  hands  made  as  if  to 
lift  themselves  from  his  knees.  "  Look  at  his 
face,"  my  neighbour  said.  I  looked  and  saw 
that  the  dull  mask  was  slightly  changing,  that 
some  emotion  at  last  was  rising  to  the  surface 
of  that  stolid  countenance,  striking  its  cloudy 
aspect  with  the  first  anticipations  of  breaking 
light.  Would  that  cloud  dissolve?  Would  the 
light  completely  break  and  irradiate  player, 
piano,  and  audience,  all  equally  keyed  up  to 
321 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

the  delayed  climax?  Would  those  massive 
hands  rise  slowly,  slowly,  and  hanging  aloft 
an  instant  crash .  down  in  a  rage  of  harmony 
upon  keyboard  and  auditors'  hearts?  No.  The 
clouds  once  more  swept  over  that  massive  face. 
The  player  moistened  his  lips  with  his  tongue, 
half-turned  on  his  chair,  and  slowly  swept  the 
hall  with  an  indifferent,  almost  a  disdainful  eye. 
Then  he  sank  into  his  former  lassitude.  His 
hands  dropped  to  his  side  without  striking  the 
keys.  Evidently  the  time  had  not  come.  The 
violins  in  the  orchestra  sang  on. 

My  neighbour  was  not  the  only  one  to  fall 
under  the  spell  of  such  masterly  musicianship. 
Twenty-four  ladies  in  the  parquette  shrank 
back  into  their  seats  with  a  half-sob  of  brim 
ming  emotion,  and  implored  their  escorts  to 
look  at  the  artist's  face.  Eleven  ladies  in  the 
lower  boxes  interrupted  their  conversation  to 
remark  that  it  was  wonderful  what  soul  those 


CHOPIN'S   SUCCESSORS 

Slavs  managed  to  put  into  their  playing.  In 
the  upper  balconies  listeners  strained  forward 
in  their  seats  so  that  from  below  it  seemed  as 
if  they  were  about  to  precipitate  themselves 
over  the  railings.  What  expert  opinion  had 
described  as  the  sublimest  ten  minutes  in  the 
great  pianist's  greatest  concerto  had  just  be 
gun.  The  conductor  slightly  raised  himself 
on  his  toes.  Instantly  through  the  weaving  of 
the  violins  the  voices  of  the  wood  instruments 
began  to  break  out.  The  contest  between  the 
two  came  quickly  to  its  climax.  The  strings 
were  forced  back  and  back,  wailing  an  inef 
fective  protest  against  the  shrilling  advance 
of  the  woods.  A  solitary  'cello  made  dogged 
resistance,  knowing  its  cause  hopeless,  but  de 
termined  to  sell  life  as  dearly  as  possible.  But 
the  'cello,  too,  went  down  and  for  a  bar  or  two 
the  flutes  and  oboes  sang  a  paean  of  victory. 
Too  soon.  Upon  them,  like  a  tidal  wave,  swept 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

down  a  hurricane  of  brasses  and  shook  the  hall 
with  its  resonant  thunders. 

That  was  the  moment  our  artist  at  the  piano 
had  been  waiting  for.  His  heavy  figure  straight 
ened  up ;  it  seemed  to  swell  to  monstrous  pro 
portions,  forcing  orchestra  and  leader  out  of 
the  vision  and  consciousness  of  his  listeners. 
His  face  now  was  all  eloquence.  A  divine  wrath 
almost  made  his  eyes  blaze  as  he  prepared  to 
hurl  himself  at  the  silent,  yet  quivering  instru 
ment.  His  huge  hands  hovered  over  the  key 
board  ready  to  fall  and  destroy.  His  eyes  ran 
over  the  keys  as  if  searching  for  the  vulnerable, 
for  the  vital  spot.  Back  and  forth  his  eyes 
ran,  and  his  outstretched  fingers  kept  pace  with 
them  in  the  air.  But  those  fingers  could  find 
no  resting-place.  Still  the  piano  remained 
silent.  And  then  came  the  inevitable  reaction. 
Such  passion  could  not  last  without  crushing 
player  and  audience  alike.  Seven  ladies  in  the 


CHOPIN'S   SUCCESSORS 

parquette  were  grasping  the  arms  of  their 
chairs,  and  three  women  in  the  upper  balcony 
had  seized  the  arms  of  their  escorts,  as  the 
brasses  crashed  once  and  died  out.  The  flutes 
for  an  instant  reappeared,  to  make  way  in  turn 
for  the  violins,  which  now  began  timidly  to 
peep  out  from  their  hiding-places.  They  grew 
bolder;  they  joined  hands,  and  once  more  their 
insistent  story  quivered  and  sang  throughout 
the  house.  And  as  they  sang,  the  player  at  the 
piano,  exhausted  by  his  supreme  effort,  sank 
more  and  more  into  his  indifferent  former  self. 
His  form  collapsed,  the  fire  in  his  eyes  died 
out,  and  the  powerful  hands  wearily  drooped 
and  drooped  till  they  rested  once  more  on  the 
player's  knees.  A  sigh  of  relief  swept  over 
the  hall.  Human  emotion  could  stand  no  more. 
The  audience  could  hardly  wait  for  the  last 
throb  of  the  violins,  to  break  out  in  rapturous 
applause.  The  master  rose,  bowed  sorrowfully 
325 


THE  PATIENT   OBSERVER 

towards    nobody    in    particular,    and    walked 
off. 

"  Did  you  watch  his  face?  "  asked  my  neigh 
bour.  "  Have  you  ever  come  across  such  ut 
terly  overpowering  individuality?  I  have 
played  for  fifteen  years,  but  if  I  played  for 
fifty  years  I  could  never  even  approach  art 
like  this." 


326 


XXXIII 
THE  IRREPRESSIBLE  CONFLICT 

"  THE  arguments  for  and  against  woman  suf 
frage,"  said  Harding,  "  seem  to  me  very  evenly 
balanced.  I  agree  with  Dr.  Biddle  of  the  So 
ciety  for  the  Promotion  of  Beautiful  Manners, 
that  it  is  unseemly  for  a  woman  to  climb  a  truck 
and  demand  the  ballot.  Dr.  Biddle  maintains 
that  if  woman  wants  the  ballot  she  should  wait 
until  every  one  is  asleep  and  then  go  through 
somebody's  pockets  for  it.  Woman,  Dr.  Biddle 
thinks,  has  her  own  peculiar  sphere,  which,  as 
the  latest  Census  figures  show,  includes  the 
nursery,  the  kitchen,  the  vaudeville  stage,  col 
lege  teaching,  stenography,  the  law,  medicine, 
the  ministry,  as  well  as  the  manufacture  of  agri 
cultural  implements,  ammunition,  artificial 
327 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

feathers  and  limbs,  automobiles,  axle-grease, 
boots  and  shoes,  bread-knives,  brooms,  brushes, 
buttons,  carriages  and  wagons,  charcoal,  cheese, 
cigars,  clocks,  clothing  and  so  on  to  x,  y,  and  z. 

"  Can  anything  be  more  fatal  to  our  ideals  of 
true  womanliness,  Dr.  Biddle  asks,  than  a  suf 
fragette  who  throws  stones?  In  reply  to  this, 
Miss  Annabelle  Bloodthurst  asserts  that  if  we 
count  the  number  of  successful  suffragette  hits 
woman  is  never  so  true  to  her  sex  as  when  she 
is  heaving  bricks  at  a  British  prime  minister. 

"  Professor  Tumbler  lays  particular  stress  on 
the  outrageous  conduct  of  the  English  suf 
fragettes.  He  recalls  how  the  Secretary  for 
Foreign  Affairs,  while  eating  a  charlotte  russe, 
felt  his  teeth  strike  against  a  hard  object,  which 
turned  out  to  be  a  cardboard  cylinder  inscribed 
*  Votes  for  Women.'  The  chancellor  of  the 
Duchy  of  Lancaster  was  about  to  light  his 
after-dinner  cigar  the  other  day  when  the  cigar 
328 


IRREPRESSIBLE    CONFLICT 

suddenly  expanded  into  a  paper  fan  bearing  the 
legend,  '  Tyrants,  beware ! '  The  newest 
Dreadnought  with  the  First  Lord  of  the  Ad 
miralty  on  board  was  preparing  to  set  out  on 
her  trial  trip  when  it  was  discovered  that  the 
boilers  were  not  making  steam.  When  the  fur 
nace  doors  were  opened  two  dozen  suffragettes, 
concealed  within,  began  to  shout,  c  We  want 
votes ! '  The  leader  of  the  Opposition  is  known 
to  have  walked  all  the  way  down  Piccadilly  with 
a  tag  tied  to  his  coattails  inscribed :  '  I  see  no 
reason  for  bestowing  the  suffrage  on  women.' 

"  But  perhaps  the  most  dastardly  outrage 
occurred  at  the  baptism  of  the  youngest  child 
of  a  prominent  treasury  official.  It  seems  that 
the  nurse,  who  was  a  suffragette  in  disguise, 
had  removed  the  child,  a  girl,  and  substituted  a 
mechanical  doll,  with  a  phonographic  attach 
ment.  The  clergyman  was  in  the  middle  of  his 
discourse  when  the  doll  began  to  scream,  '  Votes 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

for  women.'  The  father  gasped,  '  What !  So 
early  ?  '  and  fainted. 

"  The  more  you  weigh  the  reasons  pro  and 
con,"  continued  Harding,  as  he  lit  one  of  my 
cigars,  "  the  harder  it  is  to  decide.  Mrs. 
Cadgers  has  pointed  out  that  under  our  present 
system  the  wife  of  a  college  professor  is  not  al 
lowed  to  vote,  whereas  an  illiterate  Greek  fruit 
peddler  may.  But  Mr.  Rattler  replies  that 
the  college  professor,  too,  seldom  votes,  and  if 
he  does  he  spoils  his  ballot  by  trying  to  split  his 
ticket.  Why,  demands  Mrs.  Cadgers,  should 
women  who  pay  taxes  be  refused  a  voice  in  the 
management  of  public  affairs?  Because,  re 
plies  Mr.  Rattler,  the  suffrage  and  taxes  do  not 
necessarily  go  together.  In  our  country  at  the 
present  day  many  millionaires  who  regularly 
cast  their  votes  never  pay  their  taxes. 

"  Mr.  Rattler  is  particularly  afraid  that 
woman  suffrage  will  break  up  the  family. 
330 


IRREPRESSIBLE    CONFLICT 

*  Imagine,'  he  says,  '  a  family  in  which  the  hus 
band  is  a  Democrat  and  the  wife  a  Cannon  Re 
publican.  Imagine  them  constantly  fighting 
out  the  subject  of  tariff  revision  over  the  sup 
per-table,  and  conceive  the  dreadful  effect  on  the 
children,  who  at  present  are  accustomed  to  see 
father  light  his  cigar  after  supper  and  fall 
asleep.  Or  suppose  the  wife  develops  a  passion 
for  political  meetings.  That  means  that  the 
husband  will  have  to  stay  at  home  with  the 
baby.'  *  Well,'  replies  Mrs.  Cadgers,  <  such  an 
arrangement  has  its  advantages.  It  would  not 
only  give  the  wife  a  chance  to  learn  the  meaning 
of  citizenship,  but  it  would  give  the  husband  a 
chance  to  get  acquainted  with  the  baby.'  And 
besides,  Mrs.  Cadgers  goes  on  to  argue,  a 
woman's  political  duties  need  not  take  up  more 
than  a  small  fraction  of  her  time.  That,  re 
torts  Mr.  Rattler,  with  a  sneer,  is  because 
woman  derives  her  ideas  on  the  subject  from 
331 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

seeing  her  husband  fulfil  his  duties  as  a  citizen 
once  every  two  years  when  he  forgets  to  register. 
"  An  excellent  debate  on  the  subject  was  the 
one  between  Mrs.  Excelsior,  who  spoke  in  favour 
of  the  ballot  for  women,  and  Professor  Van 
Doodle,  who  upheld  the  negative.  Professor 
Van  Doodle  maintained  that  women  are  in 
capable  of  taking  a  genuine  interest  in  public 
affairs.  What  is  it  that  appeals  to  a  woman 
when  she  reads  a  newspaper?  A  Presidential 
election  may  be  impending,  a  great  war  is  raging 
in  the  Far  East,  an  explorer  has  just  returned 
from  the  South  Pole,  and,  woman,  picking  up 
the  Sunday  paper,  plunges  straight  into  the 
fashion  columns !  She  hardly  finds  time  to  an 
swer  her  husband's  petulant  inquiry  as  to  what 
she  has  done  with  the  comic  supplement.  Can 
woman  take  an  impersonal  view  of  things?  No, 
says  Professor  Van  Doodle.  In  a  critical 
Presidential  election,  one  in  which  the  fate  of 


IRREPRESSIBLE    CONFLICT 

the  country  is  at  stake,  she  will  vote  for  the 
candidate  from  whom  she  thinks  she  can  get 
most  for  her  husband  and  her  children,  whereas, 
her  husband  under  the  same  circumstances  will 
cast  aside  all  personal  interests  and  vote  the 
same  ticket  his  father  voted  for.  Woman,  con 
cluded  the  professor,  is  constitutionally  in 
capable  of  distinguishing  between  right  and 
wrong,  between  truth  and  falsehood. 

"  Mrs.  Excelsior  made  a  spirited  defence. 
She  showed  that  woman's  undeveloped  sense  of 
what  truth  and  honesty  are,  would  not  handicap 
her  in  the  pursuit  of  practical  politics.  She 
argued  that  the  complicated  problems  of  munic 
ipal  finance  are  no  easier  for  the  man  who  sets 
out  to  raise  a  family  on  fifteen  dollars  a  week 
than  for  the  woman  who  succeeds  in  doing  so. 
She  declared  that  a  person  who  can  travel  thirty 
miles  by  subway  and  surface  car,  price  $500 
worth  of  dressgoods,  and  buy  her  lunch,  all  on 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

fifteen  cents  in  cash  and  a  transfer  ticket, 
would  make  a  good  comptroller  for  New  York 
City. 

"  Professor  Van  Doodle  claimed  that  under 
woman  suffrage  only  a  good-looking  candidate 
would  stand  a  chance  of  being  elected.  Mrs. 
Excelsior  replied  that  there  was  no  reason  for 
believing  that  women  would  be  more  particular 
in  choosing  a  State  Senator  than  in  selecting 
a  husband.  The  professor  was  foolish  when  he 
asserted  that  if  women  went  to  the  polls  they 
would  vote  for  the  aldermen  and  the  sheriffs, 
and  would  forget  to  vote  for  the  President  of 
the  United  States,  and  would  insist  on  doing  so 
in  a  postscript.  This  was  of  a  piece  with  the 
other  ancient  jest  that  women  are  sure  to  vote 
for  a  Democrat  when  at  heart  they  prefer  a  Re 
publican,  and  vice  "versa. 

"  The  whole  case,"  concluded  Harding,  "  was 
summed  up  by  the  Rev.  Dr.  Hollow  when  he  said 
334 


IRREPRESSIBLE    CONFLICT 

that  in  theory  there  is  no  objection  to  the  pres 
ent  arrangement  by  which  man  rules  the  earth 
through  his  reason,  and  woman  rules  man 
through  his  stomach;  but  unfortunately,  the 
human  reason  and  the  average  man's  stomach 
are  apt  to  get  out  of  order." 


335 


XXXIV 

THE  GERMS  OF  CULTURE 

IN  my  afternoon  paper  there  was  a  letter  by 
Veritas  who  tried  to  prove  something  about  the 
Trusts  by  quoting  from  the  third  volume  of 
Macaulay's  history.  After  dinner  I  took  the 
book  from  the  shelf  and  as  I  struck  it  against 
the  table  to  let  the  dust  fly  up,  I  thought  of 
what  Mrs.  Harrington  said.  The  Harringtons 
had  spent  an  evening  with  me.  As  they  rose 
to  go  Mrs.  Harrington  ran  the  tip  of  her 
gloved  finger  across  half  a  dozen  dingy  volumes 
and  sniffed.  "  Why  don't  you  put  glass  doors 
on  your  bookshelves  ?  "  she  asked.  It  was  a 
raw  point  with  me  and  she  knew  it.  "  The 
pretty  kind,  perhaps,"  I  sneered,  "  with  leaded 
panes  and  an  antique  iron  lock?  "  "  Exactly," 


THE   GERMS    OP   CULTURE 

she  replied.  "  The  dust  here  is  abominable. 
You  must  be  just  steeped  in  all  sorts  of  infec 
tion  ;  and  perhaps  if  you  kept  your  books  under 
lock  and  key  people  wouldn't  run  away  with 
them."  I  was  a  fool  to  have  tried  irony  upon 
Mrs.  Harrington.  Her  outlook  upon  life  is 
literal  and  domestic.  Books  are  to  her  pri 
marily  part  of  a  scheme  of  interior  decoration. 
Harrington's  views  come  closer  to  my  own,  but 
Harrington  is  an  indulgent  husband. 

The  incident  was  now  a  week  old,  but  some 
thing  of  the  original  fury  came  back  to  me. 
It  was  exasperating  that  the  world  should  be  so 
afraid  of  dust  in  the  only  place  where  dust  has 
meaning  and  beauty.  People  who  will  go 
abroad  in  motor  cars  and  veneer  themselves  with 
the  germ-laden  dust  of  the  highway,  find  it  im 
possible  to  endure  the  silent  deposit  of  the  years 
on  the  covers  of  an  old  book.  And  the  dust 
of  the  gutter  that  is  swept  up  by  trailing 
337 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

skirts?  And  the  dust  of  soggy  theatre-chairs? 
And  the  dust  of  old  beliefs  in  which  we  live, 
my  friend?  And  the  dust  that  statesmen  and 
prophets  are  always  throwing  into  our  eyes? 
None  of  these  interfere  with  Mrs.  Harrington's 
peace  of  mind.  But  when  it  comes  to  the  dust 
on  the  gilt  tops  of  my  red-buckrammed  Moliere 
she  fears  infection. 

And  yet  Harrington  is  a  man  of  exceptional 
intelligence.  He  would  agree  with  me  that  in 
fection  from  book-dust  is  not  an  ignoble  form 
of  death.  I  sit  there  and  plot  obituaries.  "  Mr. 
H.  Wellington  Jones,"  says  the  Evening  Star, 
"  died  yesterday  afternoon  from  ptomaine  poi 
soning,  after  a  very  brief  illness.  Friday  night 
he  was  with  a  merry  group  of  diners  in  one 
of  our  best-known  and  most  brilliantly  lighted 
Broadway  restaurants.  He  partook  heartily 
of  lobster  salad,  of  which,  his  closest  friends 
declare,  he  was  inordinately  fond.  Almost  im- 
338 


THE   GERMS    OF   CULTURE 

mediately  he  complained  of  being  ill  and  was 
taken  home  in  a  taxicab."  If  I  were  H.  Wel 
lington  Jones  and  it  were  my  fate  to  die  of 
poison  I  could  frame  a  nobler  end  for  myself. 
"  Mr.  H.  Wellington  Jones,"  I  would  have  it 
read,  "  died  yesterday  of  some  mysterious  form 
of  bacterial  poisoning  contracted  while  turning 
over  the  pages  of  an  old  family  Bible  which 
he  was  accustomed  to  consult  at  frequent  inter 
vals.  Mr.  Smith  had  a  cut  finger  which  was 
not  quite  healed  and  it  is  supposed  that  a  dust- 
speck  from  the  pages  of  the  old  book  must  have 
entered  the  wound  and  induced  sepsis.  He  was 
found  unconscious  in  his  chair  with  the  book 
open  at  the  thirtieth  chapter  of  Proverbs." 
Yes,  I  sometimes  find  it  hard  to  understand 
what  Harrington,  a  man  of  really  fine  sensi 
bilities,  sees  in  Mrs.  Harrington.  The  very 
suggestion  of  locking  up  books  to  prevent  their 
being  carried  away  hurts  like  the  screech  of  a 
339 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

pencil  upon  a  slate.  I  think  of  Mrs.  Harring 
ton  and  then  I  think  of  Cooper.  Cooper's 
shelves  are  continuously  being  denuded  by  his 
friends.  But  if  you  think  of  Cooper  as  a  help 
less  victim  you  are  sadly  mistaken.  There  is 
an  elaborate  scheme  behind  it  all,  a  scheme  of 
such  transcendent  ingenuity  as  only  simple- 
hearted,  sweet-natured,  unpractised,  purblind 
visionaries  like  Cooper  are  capable  of. 

He  let  me  into  the  secret  one  day  when  he 
saw  that  I  was  about  to  find  it  out  for  myself. 
"  I  know  very  many  dear  people,"  he  said, 
"  who  are  too  busy  to  read  books  or  too  little 
in  the  habit  of  it.  You  know  them,  too;  they 
are  men  and  women  in  whom  the  pulse  of  life 
beats  too  rapidly  for  the  calm  pleasures  of 
reading.  They  are  not  insensible  to  fine  ideas, 
but  they  must  see  these  ideas  in  concrete  form. 
If  I,  for  instance,  wish  to  know  something  about 
Spain,  I  get  one  of  Martin  Hume's  books,  but 
340 


THE   GERMS   OF   CULTURE 

these  people  take  a  steamer  and  go  to  Spain. 
I  have  read  everything  of  Meredith's  and  they 
have  read  almost  nothing,  but  they  saw  Mere 
dith  in  London  and  spent  a  week-end  with  him 
at  a  country-house  in  Sussex.  I  avoid  celebri 
ties  in  the  flesh.  I  don't  want  to  minister  to 
them  and  I  want  still  less  to  patronise  them. 
I  am  afraid  I  should  be  disappointed  in  them 
and  I  am  sure  they  would  be  disappointed 
in  me. 

"  However,  that's  not  the  point,"  says  Coo 
per.  "  The  problem  is  to  make  a  man  read  who 
won't  read  of  his  own  accord.  I  do  it  by  ask 
ing  such  a  man  to  dinner.  I  pull  out  a  volume 
of  Marriott's  and  remark,  without  emphasis, 
that  after  infinite  exertion  I  have  just  got  it 
back  from  Woolsey,  who  is  wild  over  the  book. 
The  fires  of  envy  and  acquisition  flash  in  my 
visitor's  eye.  Might  he  have  the  book  for  a 
day  or  two?  Yes,  I  say  after  some  hesitation, 
341 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

but  he  must  promise  to  bring  it  back.  He 
grows  fervent.  Of  course  he  will  bring  it  back, 
by  Saturday  at  the  very  latest  and  in  person. 
And  he  is  my  man  from  that  moment.  I  have 
lost  the  book,  of  course,  but  I  have  smuggled 
my  troops  within  the  fort,  I  have  laid  the  train, 
I  have  transmitted  the  infection.  The  serpent 
is  in  the  garden.  Time  will  do  the  work."  The 
allusion  was  to  Cooper's  bookplate,  a  red  ser 
pent  about  a  golden  staff. 

"  Not  that  I  leave  it  altogether  to  time," 
says  Cooper.  "Once  I  have  handed  over  the 
book  to  Hobson,  I  make  it  a  point  to  call  on 
him  at  least  once  a  week.  Do  you  see  why? 
Left  to  himself,  Hobson  might  soon  outlive  the 
first  flush  of  his  enthusiasm  for  that  book.  But 
if  Hobson  expects  me  to  drop  in  at  any  mo 
ment,  he  is  afraid  I  may  find  the  book  on  his 
library  table  and  ask  him  whether  he  has  read 
it.  So  he  hides  the  book  in  his  bedroom.  Then 


THE    GERMS    OF    CULTURE 

he  is  indeed  mine.  Some  night  he  will  be  out 
of  sorts  and  find  it  hard  to  go  to  sleep.  His 
eye  will  fall  on  the  book  lying  there  on  his 
table,  and  he  will  pick  it  up,  at  the  same  time 
lighting  a  cigar.  I  shall  never  see  that  book 
again.  But,  I  leave  it  to  you,  who  needs  that 
book  more,  I  or  Hobson?  " 

But  Cooper  did  not  tell  all.  I  know  he  has 
made  use  of  shrewder  tactics.  Ask  any  one 
of  his  acquaintances  why  Cooper  is  never  seen 
without  a  half-dozen  magazines  under  his  arm, 
an  odd  volume  or  two  of  French  criticism,  and 
a  couple  of  operatic  scores.  They  will  reply 
that  it  is  just  Cooper's  way.  It  goes  with  his 
black  slouch  hat,  his  badly-creased  trousers,  his 
flowing  cravat,  and  his  general  air  of  pre- 
Raphaelite  ineptitude.  It  goes  with  his  com 
prehensive  ignorance  of  present-day  politics 
and  science,  and  everything  else  in  the  present 
that  well-informed  people  are  supposed  to 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

know.  It  goes  with  his  total  inability  to  be 
on  time  for  dinners,  and  his  habit  of  getting 
lost  in  the  subway.  But  Cooper  is  not  as  often 
in  the  clouds  as  some  imagine. 

How  many  of  Cooper's  friends,  for  example, 
have  ever  found  peculiar  significance  in  his  tal 
ent  for  forgetting  things  in  other  people's 
houses?  Beneath  that  apparently  characteris 
tic  trait  there  is  a  Machiavellian  motive  which 
I  alone  have  found  out.  Hobson,  let  us  say,  has 
been  taking  dinner  with  Cooper,  who  gently 
pulls  a  copy  of  "  Monna  Vanna "  from  the 
shelf.  Hobson  does  not  rise  to  the  bait.  He 
may  have  heard  that  Maeterlinck  is  a  "  high 
brow  "  and  it  frightens  him.  Or  Hobson  may 
not  be  going  home  that  night,  or  he  may  object 
to  carrying  a  parcel  in  the  subway,  or  for  any 
other  reason  he  will  omit  to  take  the  book  with 
him.  "  The  next  day,"  says  Cooper,  "  I  pay 
Hobson  a  return  visit,  and  forget  the  book  on 
344 


THE    GERMS    OF    CULTURE 

his  hall-table.  Frequently  Hobson  may  be  too 
busy  to  take  notice  of  the  accident.  In  that 
case  I  call  him  up  on  the  telephone  as  soon  as 
I  leave  his  house  and  ask  in  great  agitation 
whether  by  any  chance  I  have  left  a  volume  of 
Maeterlinck  on  his  hall-table.  Sometimes  I  add 
that  Woolsey  has  been  after  that  volume  for 
weeks.  That  night,  I  feel  sure,  Hobson  will 
carry  the  book  up  to  his  bedroom." 

And  as  Cooper  spoke  I  thought  of  the  Smith 
family,  whom,  by  methods  like  those  I  have  de 
scribed,  Cooper  succeeded  in  saving  from  them 
selves.  Nerves  in  the  Smith  family  were  badly 
rasped.  The  mother  was  not  making  great 
headway  in  her  social  campaigns.  Her  husband 
chafed  at  his  children's  idleness  and  extrava 
gance.  The  children  went  in  sullen  fashion 
about  their  own  business.  They  had  no  re 
sources  of  their  own.  There  was  gloom  in  that 
household  and  stifled  rancour,  and  the  danger 
345 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

of  worse  things  to  come,  until  the  day  when 
Cooper  called  and  forgot  at  one  blow  a  copy 
of  "  Richard  Feverel,"  the  "  Bab  Ballads,"  and 
the  third  volume  of  Ferrero's  "  Rome." 

As  I  have  said,  Cooper  was  not  blind  to  the 
good  he  was  doing.  False  modesty  was  not  one 
of  his  failings.  He  would  continually  have  me 
admire  his  bookshelves.  The  books  he  was 
proudest  of  were  those  he  had  lent  or  given 
away.  .  .  .  "  I  have  a  larger  number  of 
books  missing,"  he  would  boast,  "  than  any  man 
of  my  acquaintance.  This  big  hole  here  is  my 
Gibbon.  I  sent  it  to  an  interesting  old  chap 
I  met  at  a  public  dinner  some  years  ago.  He 
was  a  prosperous  hardware  merchant,  self-made, 
and,  like  all  self-made  men,  a  bit  unfinished.  He 
had  read  very  little.  I  don't  recall  how  I  hap 
pened  to  mention  Gibbon  or  to  send  him  the 
set.  I  think  I  may  have  forgotten  the  first  vol 
ume  at  his  office  the  next  morning.  He  de- 
346 


THE    GERMS    OF    CULTURE5 

voured  Gibbon.  From  him  he  went  to  Tacitus. 
He  has  since  read  hundreds  of  books  on  the 
Roman  empire  and  he  has  other  hundreds  of 
volumes  waiting  to  be  read.  But  somehow  he 
has  never  thought  of  sending  me  back  my 
shabby  old  Gibbon.  And  that  was  the  way 
with  my  Montaigne — gone.  And  here  were  two 
editions  of  Gulliver.  I  lent  one  to  a  nephew  of 
the  Harringtons  and  the  other  to  a  rather  prim 
young  lady  from  Boston  who  impressed  me  as 
having  had  too  much  Emerson.  My  Shelley 
is  gone.  My  *  Rousseau's  Confessions '  is  also 
gone."  And  Cooper  smiled  at  me  beatifically. 

That  was  Cooper.  But  Mrs.  Harrington 
that  night  saw  things  in  quite  a  different  light. 
She  grumbled  and  sniffed,  and  finally  grew 
vehement.  I  am  not  a  saint  like  Cooper,  but 
here  and  there  my  shelves,  too,  show  the  visi 
tations  of  friends.  "  Not  a  single  complete 
set,"  wailed  Mrs.  Harrington,  "  everything 
347 


THE   PATIENT   OBSERVER 

lugged  away  by  people  who  should  be  taught  to 
know  better.  Browning,  volumes  I,  II,  V,  and 
VII — four  volumes  gone.  Middlemarch,  vol 
ume  II,  first  volume  gone.  Morley's  Gladstone, 
volumes  I  and  III,  one  volume  gone.  I  wager 
you  don't  even  know  who  has  the  second  vol 
ume  of  your  Gladstone.  Do  you,  now?  " 

To  tell  the  truth,  I  did  not  for  the  moment 
know.  And  as  I  hesitated  she  thrust  one  of  the 
volumes  in  triumph  at  me  and  mechanically  I 
opened  the  book  and  saw  a  red  serpent  about 
a  golden  staff.  "  I  remember  now,"  I  told  Mrs. 
Harrington.  "  I'll  get  the  second  volume  the 
next  time  I  call  on  Cooper." 


THE   END 


848 


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